‘Students are losing vital literacy and numeracy skills’
THE shortage of teachers means that for some sixth year students, their technology class is a 30minute walk down the road in Co. Wicklow.
Conall Ó Dufaigh, the principal of Coláiste Ráithín secondary school, said this is the third year in a row his school is missing teachers for core subjects.
He said: ‘My junior groups last year were down an English teacher and a maths teacher. It’s a massive problem.’
To counter it, rules have had to be bent – maths classes were divided from three to two classes, in breach of regulations, and Mr Ó Dufaigh himself taught one of the groups for free.
But, he stresses, this type of solution is not always possible.
After their technology teacher left for another school, students who wanted to keep studying the subject had to trek down the road to attend classes – losing out on valuable class time for other lessons.
Similarly, while his school has now managed to hire a chemistry teacher, Leaving Cert students hoping to take the subject were previously having to pay out of pocket for after-school lessons from a teacher at a different school.
As well as dropping subjects or combining classes, schools are increasingly hiring unqualified teachers – nearly 2,000 education students are currently working in schools, according to the Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI).
As a result, they’re barely able to attend college lectures, despite paying fees for tuition.
Mr Ó Dufaigh, for example, is teaching SPHE this year, despite not having the qualifications for it. He revealed: ‘It’s nothing I trained in – but I’m doing everything I can with it, I’ve signed up for every training offered. But there’s no guarantee that every teacher given a position like that will be willing or able to do so.’
Mr Ó Dufaigh – who is also an English and history teacher at the school – stressed that, when people lose out on education, the impact is felt for years ahead.
‘We saw it with Covid, and now it’s the same logic. If students lose a year of having an organised English class with a trained teacher, they’re going to struggle with the following year,’ he said. ‘It’s crucial things like literacy and numeracy, important skills that students need to develop for life, as well as for exams, that are being lost.
‘If you struggle a lot with science in first and third year, you’re less likely to choose science for Leaving Cert – or if you do, you’re going to find a lot more difficult.
‘Ultimately, it’s a downward spiral. I know a number of people who have left the profession or emigrated and never came back and it comes down to the fact that there are serious financial constraints.’