Clamping down on career breaks ‘will not address teacher staff shortages’

TEACHERS’ unions have warned that restricting career breaks will make the profession less attractive to new entrants.

Education Minister Richard Bruton indicated this week that, amid staff shortage issues, officials will move to clamp down on career breaks from schools.

However, Teachers’ Union of Ireland president Joanne Irwin said that limiting the option would make it more difficult to retain secondary teachers.

Some 2,264 teachers are on career breaks of up to five years.

Advisories are being issued that career breaks can only be granted if a vacancy can be filled.

Ms Irwin said the clampdown was ‘an ill-advised sticking-plaster approach that ignores the urgent need to remedy a much more serious problem’.

The career breaks issue has emerged as primary schools report difficulties in recruiting substitutes to cover temporary absences, and secondary schools report difficulties in recruiting teachers for certain subjects.

Large numbers of newly qualified teachers are going abroad to work, with young teachers facing the issue of a two-tier pay system for professionals who qualified after 2011.

Mr Bruton said career breaks had the effect of replacing a permanent member of staff with a person on a temporary one-year contract. ‘This is not appealing to many teachers,’ he said.

Sheila Nunan, general secretary of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation, said career breaks created employment for new entrants.

THAT Education Minister Richard Bruton has moved to limit teachers’ career breaks is to be welcomed in the light of current staffing shortages.

The fact, however, that so many young teachers have been permitted up to now to enjoy the advantage of such breaks so early in their teaching life, at a time, in fact, when they have yet to establish a track record that would actually constitute a career, is somewhat concerning.

Surely such breaks should be available only to those who have a substantial number of years’ service, who have, indeed, earned their spurs and honed their teaching skills over a sustained period of time.

To be able to take such a break – for up to five years – and then return to the workforce of the same school is a luxury the majority of workers do not enjoy.

Our education system is responsible for ensuring young minds reach their maximum potential – so this is a matter of critical importance.

There needs to be proper criteria in place, operating across the entire system, rather than specific requests being granted at the discretion of the school in question.