Minister gives backing to apprentice teacher plan
EDUCATION Minister Batt O'Keeffe has given conditional backing to a radical plan to offer a jobs lifeline to newly-graduated teachers by employing them on an apprentice-style scheme in schools.
They would be paid €20,000 a year -- about half the normal starting salary -- for doing 10-15 hours a week for up to two years, while also studying for a Master's degree.
Speaking after he addressed the INTO conference in Letterkenny, Co Donegal, yesterday, the minister said that he intended to talk to Professor Tom Collins of the National University of Ireland Maynooth, who mooted the idea.
He described Prof Collins as an eminent educationalist and said, as a minister, he was very receptive to good ideas.
"We are fiscally very tight and I want to ensure that I can do it within budget. If there are ways and mechanisms by which we can engage teachers who may not be employed gainfully, at a minimum cost, obviously we are going to consider it," Mr O'Keeffe said.
"I am going to sit down and talk to him and look in detail at the proposal and see its merits and what the implications for my department are."
The obvious advantages of the scheme include saving teachers from the dole queue while upgrading their qualification and providing extra resources for schools. Prof Collins also believes it can be done on an exchequer-neutral basis by using existing funding mechanisms within the Department of Social and Family Affairs, the Department of Education and Science and the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment in a new way.
He sees it as a solution to meeting the needs of about 1,000 HDip students due to graduate this summer while plugging gaps caused by education cutbacks in second-level schools, which are due to lose about 1,000 teaching posts in September.
There are also about 2,000 graduates expected to leave primary teacher training colleges this summer.
Worst
While Prof Collins' proposal is based around second-level education, it could also have relevance in other areas.
Prof Collins says his scheme would allow newly-qualified teachers to begin to practice their profession and continue their academic advancement while also mitigating the worst effects of the education cutbacks.
He said it would mean that minority subjects and programmes currently threatened by the cutbacks could be retained, while other staff members in the school could potentially be freed up to pursue other studies if they wish.
He said participants in the scheme would be supernumerary and it would not result in a reduction of the current teacher allocation to the host school.
- Katherine Donnelly
