Schools struggle as teacher vacancies continue to soar

THE teacher shortage is worsening, with almost four in five second-level schools receiving no application for a recently advertised post.

The growing struggle post-primary schools face in filling vacancies is highlighted in a new survey.

In the past six months, 77pc of principals reported advertising jobs for which no one applied, up from 68pc in a survey conducted last April.

More than half the schools, 56pc, have unfilled vacancies due to recruitment and retention difficulties, up from 47pc last April. Overall, almost all schools, 97pc, say they had difficulties recruiting teachers in the past six months.

Forty-nine per cent of schools also experienced teacher retention difficulties in the same period.

Irish was the subject in which schools faced the most severe recruitment/retention difficulties, followed by home economics, French, maths,

Spanish, biology, physics, chemistry, German and PE.

When asked to rank reasons for the recruitment and retention difficulties, the primary cause was deemed to be more attractive options for new graduates in other employment.

This was followed by lower pay rates for new teachers, unavailability of contracts of full hours after appointment and accommodation costs in the vicinity of the school.

The survey was conducted by the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI), across 130 schools around the country.

TUI president Seamus Lahart blames the short

‘Two-tier pay system doing severe damage to education system’

age on two-tier salary scales, which have resulted in lower pay for teachers recruited since January 2011.

He said the findings made “clear the severe damage that the injustice of the two-tier pay system is doing to the education system and the service to students”.

For students, it meant often missing out on subject choices or being taught by ‘out-of-field’ teachers.

He said graduates who might formerly have chosen teaching were now looking at different options, with schools in both urban and rural areas routinely struggling to attract applicants to fill vacant positions.

The TUI’s 19,000 members in hundreds of post-primary schools, as well as colleges of education and institutes of technology, are engaging in a one-day stoppage next Tuesday on the pay equality issue.

Meanwhile, thousands of parents of post-primary school pupils still don’t know whether their child will be forced to stay at home next Tuesday because of the TUI strike.

Up to half of the second-level schools will definitely close as a result of the stoppage.

But many others are assessing the situation and individual school boards of management are meeting this week to decide whether they will be in a position to open, and will advise parents accordingly.

These are schools in the voluntary secondary sector – generally those which are traditional-faith schools – where the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) is the sole or dominant union.

If a school has even a small number of TUI members, it may have no option but to close because ASTI members will not provide cover and will not allow timetables to be adjusted to get around absences.

The Joint Managerial Body, which represents the voluntary secondary sector, does not yet know how many of its schools may be affected.