End of term of office
The term of office of all primary school boards of management will come to an end on 30th November 2023. This changeover date is defined in the Governance Manual for Primary Schools, so it is important that board members are aware that from the 30th November, they will cease to be members of the school board. However, they may be re-appointed or re-elected to their positions, and the new term of office will commence on 1st December 2023.
Programme of Support
Staff at Educate Together’s national office will be co-ordinating a programme to support the 2023 changeover. School principals and current chairpersons will receive information in the coming weeks which will outline the steps and any deadlines involved in the process. Support will be available for schools to help the process run as smoothly as possible.
In the meantime, it is worth considering the following:
Teacher and Parent Nominees
- Anyone who wishes to join a board of management must be eligible to do so.
- The current school principal (or acting principal) is automatically a member of the board.
- Parent nominees must be parents of children currently attending the school and must be elected following a set process.
- Similarly, the teacher nominee must also be elected, and must currently be working as a teacher in the school, so unfortunately teachers currently on leave or career break are not eligible.
- Parent and teacher nominees must be elected in accordance with the regulations set down in the governance manual.
Patron Nominees
Patron nominees are appointed by Educate Together and one of these is nominated to be the chairperson. Patron nominees must be approved by the patron and a programme of advertising, recruitment and candidate selection will be in place to support boards where there are patron nominee vacancies.
Community Nominees
Once the above nominees are in place, these six members meet and appoint two community nominees to the board. Once these eight members are in place the board can be formally constituted.
Re-Appointment
In some cases, nominees may wish to be re-appointed to the board as part of the changeover, but ideally one person should not serve more than two consecutive terms of office on the same board of management. The board itself should be aware of this when choosing community nominees and should avoid having the same full board re-appointed where possible.
Any current board member who has served two consecutive terms of office or is no longer eligible for board membership may like to remain involved with Educate Together. If this is the case, they may wish to serve on the board of another nearby school. This may also be true for candidates who stand for election but are not elected to the board. Staff in the national office will be very interested to hear from anyone who is interested in volunteering for board membership and can answer you queries at schoolsupport@educatetogether.ie
You don’t need any formal board experience to become a member; full training will be provided for new and existing board members.
