Teaching graduates losing class battle
'GO forth and make a difference," a graduating class of new teachers was urged last Friday.
Fine sentiments indeed from Dr Padraig Cremin, the President of Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, at a conferring ceremony.
But the reality is that many of them will not be able to make a difference in Irish classrooms, which are among the most overcrowded in Europe, for a simple reason -- they cannot get work.
If they do go forth to make a difference and help form young minds, it will be in schools in England, New Zealand, the Gulf States or elsewhere.
There is something slightly absurd about spending millions of euro to develop people's skills only to see them using their talents to benefit other countries.
That is happening at the moment in many professions such as architecture, accountancy and law, where the market determines availability of jobs.
But in teaching, the Government has much greater control over the numbers being trained and the number of jobs available. It can plan over a number of years to link supply and demand of teachers.
It had ramped up the numbers in training in recent years, particularly at primary level. But the shutters came down on the jobs with a vengeance this year, with terrible consequences for young teachers. Hardly the best example of joined-up government thinking.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that many are going abroad to teach, while others were lucky to get jobs because of the high number of retirements this year, prompted, in part, by fear of lump sums being taxed in the next Budget. The rest are scrabbling about, picking up work wherever they can. Many of them cannot get any.
As Dr Cremin told Friday's conferring ceremony, this year's new crop of teachers are the "victims of some of the cuts, most especially of the changes in pupil-teacher ratio".
What is also clear is that they are also victims of the practice of retired teachers returning to work to fill gaps for short or long periods of time.
The figures are disturbing. Granted, jobs were more plentiful at primary level last year, but was it really necessary to rehire more than 300 retired teachers to work for 60 days or more? Were there no young trained teachers available?
At second level, the excuse of plentiful jobs did not apply, yet 368 retired teachers did substitute work in secondary, community and comprehensive schools.
The figures for vocational schools are not available but we can take it for granted that at least 100 retired teachers worked in that sector as well. At almost €50 an hour, many new graduates would have jumped at the opportunity of getting that work -- but the experience was denied them.
There are, of course, circumstances where it is impossible to get hold of suitable teachers at short notice.
Last week, one secondary school principal in the west had to asked a retired guidance counsellor to return, as he was unable to get anybody else for the job, according to Ferdia Kelly from the Joint Managerial Body for secondary schools.
In the north-east a primary school was left suddenly with six gaps on its teaching staff because of illness and may have to rely on retired teachers.
Notwithstanding these problems, it surely behoves schools to make every effort to hire recent graduates. The new teachers themselves should also give their details to local schools, something they do not always do.
Bad and all as the situation is, it would have become much worse were it not for the Green Party. Most public focus was on the "No Fees" concession and the 500 extra teaching jobs over the next three years.
But the real victory was a promise not to worsen the pupil-teacher ratio again. Such seemed inevitable, not least because Colm McCarthy's Bord Snip Nua recommended it, but it is off the agenda until the next election. What is not off the agenda is where the axe will fall instead in education.
Last Thursday, the Post Primary Education Forum -- recently established in response to education cuts, and representing parents, unions and school managers -- rightly lamented the effects of the cuts on second-level schools. One in 10 has lost a language and one in 12 has lost a science subject, it told the Oireachtas Education Committee.
Every case, of course, is special, and every organisation is in favour of cuts elsewhere.
Drawing a weather analogy, Labour's education spokesperson Ruairi Quinn told the forum: "If you think the 1980s were a shower, then we are now in a tsunami."
His solution is a public campaign to ensure that 7pc of GDP is ringfenced for education; at present the figure is below 5pc.
The forum representatives agreed with him as, indeed, would all the main education players. But it's a long way from becoming a political reality.
- John Walshe
Irish Independent
