Plan to have 740 more teachers is destined to fail
PLANS to recruit 740 additional teachers are destined to fall flat, one educator claimed.
Conall Ó Dufaigh says the Budget failed to address the single greatest problem facing schools right now – staff retention.
While the Budget announced provisions for 740 additional teachers, it did not clarify how they would be supplied.
Conall, a teacher at Coláiste Ráithín secondary school in Bray, Co. Wicklow, said: ‘When they announce new teachers, what they’re announcing is new posts. Go on Education.ie any day and you’ll see how many posts there are and how few people there are to apply for them. It’s a bit bold to say they’re bringing in 700 teachers, unless they’re flying them in on a plane.’
Conall’s school began its third year this September with missing teachers. He said: ‘I have some students in my 6th year class who have to walk 20 minutes down the road to another school in order to access technology classes.
‘Teachers may not be the worst hit by the costof-living crisis – but it shows how the problem has advanced if you can’t staff necessary jobs.’
Conall says the combination of eye-watering rents and the cost-of-living crisis – neither of which he believes has been adequately addressed in this year’s Budget – is the reason there is so little take-up for these jobs.
While the Government’s increase of rental tax credit from €500 to €750 is ‘a good step’, Conall pointed out that landlords have been handed ‘almost twice as much’.
He added: ‘As a renter who knows many other renters in an even more precarious situation than my own, it doesn’t go a long way to addressing a problem that has steadily been growing for over the past decades.’
Conall said it ‘blew [his] students’ minds’ when he told them that he was able to rent a house in Dublin with two friends for just €270 a month each while working as a special needs assistant in 2012, adding: ‘That’s not possible any more.’