ASTI demands action on teacher recruitment crisis

The ongoing teacher recruitment and retention crisis is ensuring that schools are barely able to cope.

That’s according to Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland (ASTI) General Secretary Kieran Christie who has said that hundreds of unfilled post-primary teaching posts are advertised online every week.

The ASTI says this is in keeping with the recruitment and retention crisis in Irish schools and the findings of a RED C/ASTI survey published last year. In that survey, three-quarters of school leaders reported they had received no applications for an advertised teaching post and that there were unfilled teaching vacancies in almost half of all second-level schools.

The ASTI says it has learned that contrary to what was previously understood, Minister for Education, Norma Foley TD, has not sought any funding from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to induce teachers back from countries such as the United Arab Emirates, whereby upon return, they currently must recommence their careers in Ireland at the bottom of the teachers’ pay scale, irrespective of their experience.

The ASTI has long advocated for a scheme to be introduced to accommodate those who have returned and/or would return by recognition of their teaching service abroad.

In addition, the ASTI has argued that the current arrangement whereby a graduate must undertake a two-year Professional Master of Education course to qualify as a post-primary teacher is too long and is a luxury Ireland cannot afford in a time of crisis.

The organisation said it has been told that more than 30 separate measures have been implemented to seek to address the crisis.

Mr Christie said: “The refusal of the Minister for Education to seek the necessary funds to address the problems associated with incremental credit for some teachers returning to Irish schools is an abject failure.

“The minister, by seeking to lure teachers to return from other countries on the promise of part-time or fixed-term positions and to be placed on the first point of the teachers’ incremental pay scale, is failing the schools and the students in our schools.

“The impacts of this situation remain very real. Schools continue to be forced to reassign special education needs teachers to mainstream classes. Almost a fifth of schools have been forced to remove a subject or subjects from the curriculum.

“What is required is that the minister change her course and take meaningful measures that will restore and enhance the attractiveness of teaching as a profession in Ireland,” concluded Mr Christie.