‘Minister at sixes and sevens’ over teacher crisis says union
That’s according to the Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland (ASTI) who say schools are under “enormous strain” after 82% of them had no applications for vacant posts in the 23/24 school year.
The comments come following the “shocking” results of a recent ASTI survey which found that 87% of participating schools said there were no substitute teachers available to cover for absent teachers in the previous school year.
It also found 77% of schools had to employ non-qualified or casual teachers to manage teacher supply issues.
In addition to employing non-qualified teachers, the ASTI said schools had to resort to reassigning special education needs teachers to mainstream classes, adversely impacting the most vulnerable in school communities.
Almost a fifth of schools removed a subject or subjects from the curriculum, the survey also found.
In light of the survey’s findings, ASTI General Secretary Kieran Christie said that Minister for Education, Norma Foley TD, has been “inexplicably reluctant to make the changes necessary to fundamentally address the problem”.
“The Minister for Education is at sixes and sevens as the recruitment and retention crisis deepens,” said Mr Christie.
“In recent years several minimalist cosmetic interventions have been announced and repackaged that have failed to make a dent in the problem,” he added.
The interventions Mr Christie referred to include the upskilling of existing teachers, extra training places for teachers in colleges of education, changes to student teacher placement arrangements, and changes to the substitution arrangements applicable for teachers on leave schemes and retired teachers.
He continued: “Subject to satisfactory probation, permanent appointments should be made available. Shortening of the extraordinarily long teachers’ pay scale and doubling the number of middle management posts in schools would also help enormously to properly address the teacher supply crisis.”
Earlier this year, UNESCO, the UN agency championing education, announced that “the world urgently needs 44 million teachers by 2030 in order to make the sustainable development goals a reality.”
Mr Christie continued: “The children of our country are paying an enormous price in this crisis, and it will leave a long and bitter legacy.”