Note: This page was updated in July 2023.
For comprehensive details of the job sharing scheme, refer to Chapter 8 of DE Circular 0054/2019, published 1 September 2019.
- Eligibility
- Job sharing options
- Duration
- Application
- Withdrawing from job sharing
- Timetabling
- ‘Croke Park’ Hours
- Courses/School planning
- Additional work while job sharing
- Employer
- Salary Protection Scheme & your Pension
Eligibility
Teacher that will have, at the end of the year in which they are applying, completed at least twelve months of continuous service with the same school and have a post for the following school year that is greater than 50% of a whole-time teacher (i.e. greater than 14 hours 10 minutes per week for primary teachers) may apply to job share.
Exceptions: Principals, Home School Liaison Co-ordinators and teachers on secondment are not eligible to job share.
Job sharing options
Teachers may apply to job share in one of the following ways:
- Sharing a whole-time post with another teacher in their own school.
- Sharing a whole-time post with another teacher in a different school (inter-school job share).
- Sharing a whole-time post with a replacement teacher recruited by the employer.
- Reducing hours that are less than whole-time hours to job sharing hours and asking school to recruit a replacement teacher for the remaining hours.
Duration
The minimum period for a job sharing arrangement is one full school year. In exceptional circumstances, an employer may allow a job sharing arrangement to start mid-year and end no sooner than the end of the school year.
Application
A teacher wishing to job share should complete the ‘Application form for job sharing’ (Appendix A of Chapter 8, Circular 54/2019) and submit it to their employer no later than 1 February prior to the school year in which they propose to start or continue job sharing.
If a teacher wishes to extend their job sharing arrangement they must apply each year to do so.
Withdrawing from job sharing
A teacher should not be allowed to withdraw from the job sharing arrangement after 14 April or once the replacement teacher’s contract has been signed, whichever happens first. In exceptional circumstances, an application to withdraw from a job sharing scheme, in order to resume full-time work, may be considered by the employer. Such an application cannot be considered beyond 1 November.
Timetabling
It is up to the employer to decide the job sharing pattern it is willing to endorse, e.g. week on/week off or split week, while facilitating the teacher as far as is practicable.
‘Croke Park’ Hours
‘Croke Park’ hours should be completed on a pro rata basis for job sharing teachers. i.e. where two teachers are sharing a whole-time post, each should complete 18 hours.
Courses/School planning
Job-sharing teachers who are required to attend courses/school planning days when they were not timetabled to work are entitled to a day’s leave in lieu, including half-days for curriculum planning, except where the course forms part of the additional hours commitment under the Public Service Agreement (‘Croke Park’ Hours).
There is no substitute cover for these days in lieu.
Additional work while job sharing
Permanent teacher engaged in a job share
Under the normal terms of the job share scheme, set out in Chapter 8 of circular 54/2019, teachers participating in a job share may not substitute teach.
The DE has not yet confirmed whether this restriction will be removed, to allow job sharing teachers to substitute, in the 2024/25 school year.
Half-time fixed-term “replacement teacher”
Where someone is recruited as a ‘replacement teacher’, to work with another teacher in a job share, they are employed on a specified purpose (fixed-term) contract, and are not a contracted job sharer. The replacement teacher can apply for any available hours, including substitution, in any school.
Fixed-term part-time teachers can be paid for up to full-time hours. However, a maximum of two days per week may be recorded through the OLCS, and the school will have to arrange for manual payment of additional days directly with payroll.
Examples:
Mark is employed as a fixed-term half-time teacher, covering a job-share, working week on/week off. He does a full week of substitute work on his week off. Two days can be recorded on the OLCS in the normal way, but the school must contact payroll to arrangement payment for the other three days.
Mary is a fixed-term half-time teacher, covering a job-share, working a split week. On the week where she is scheduled to work two days in her job share, she works as a substitute for the other three days. She will be paid through the OLCS for two substitute days, and the third day will have to be arranged directly with primary payroll.
Employer
It is a matter for each employer to draw up and maintain its own policy on teacher absences, including job sharing. In any such policy, the welfare and education needs of pupils should be prioritised.
The employer must issue a written notice of approval/refusal of job sharing to the applying teacher by 1 March at the latest.
Where job sharing refused, the grounds for refusal should be set out in the letter of refusal.
Salary Protection Scheme and your Pension
A teacher who is a member of the Salary Protection Scheme for INTO members, should contact Cornmarket in advance of commencing a Job Share arrangement in order to avail of the relevant payment and benefit options for Job Sharers. Please call (01) 4084195 or email spsadmin@cornmarket.ie.
Working as a Job Sharer will have an impact on a teacher’s pension entitlements in a number of ways:
- The reckonable service for pension calculation will be six months for each year worked as a job sharer. Service “lost” may be bought back on return to full time work under the Notional Service Purchase Scheme, operated by the DES.
- If a teacher is on Job Share at retirement, the pensionable salary will be the full teachers’ salary.
- Any member who retires on Ill-Health Retirement while currently in a Job Sharing arrangement may have their potential “added years” calculated on a pro-rata basis.
Page updated 17 July 2024
