No Teaching job after 6 months

Seámus-Púbach

Thankfully I have Accounting to fall back on also if it comes to it but I'd much rather be purely teaching mathematics... as idealistic as that is!

Moody_mona

Seámus-Púbach wrote: »

My degree is a bachelor and Maths AND Education so I've been specifically tailored to teaching Maths at 2nd level - which I thought would surely give me the edge but alas not so!

The AND here just makes you qualified, it's a not a unique selling point. Jobs are few and far between.

quinn1

I've decided to go back to the UK. Gutted, but c'est la vie!

gavwaldo

quinn1 wrote: »

I've decided to go back to the UK. Gutted, but c'est la vie!

that sucks
best of luck

Seámus-Púbach

Moody_mona wrote: »

The AND here just makes you qualified, it's a not a unique selling point. Jobs are few and far between.

The whole course was created due to the lack of adequately qualified maths teachers in the system, and was heavily geared towards teaching the Project Maths curriculum....

I can count on one hand how many graduates are employed in Ireland despite this.

The country is a farce is my main point! Trust me I don't or never have expected to walk straight into a job. I've done my time over in this kip off a country to get some much needed experience and it still seems as though at best the only way I will be able to get my foot in the door is to hopefully pick up a few hours off subbing IF its available!

jank

It is an interesting question to why are there so few jobs in teaching and why it is so hard to get something permanent.

Is it all down to lack of recruitment or change in policy from 2007?
Is it down to peoples educational choices where they do an arts degree and latch on a H.dip in the hope of getting a teaching job?
Is it cultural?
Is it union based?

Many places in the world are crying out for teachers yet in Ireland we have a gross over supply.

Would appreciate peoples opinions on this.

Moody_mona

Seámus-Púbach wrote: »

The whole course was created due to the lack of adequately qualified maths teachers in the system, and was heavily geared towards teaching the Project Maths curriculum....

I did a concurrent Maths and education degree as well. As a sixth year putting it on my cao I thought it might show that I had a real interest in teaching, and knew that's where I wanted to be since I was 18 and not that I just chose to do it after my undergrad. But we're qualified. Not extra qualified, more qualified, heavily geared towards being qualified.

Seámus-Púbach wrote: »

I don't or never have expected to walk straight into a job.... seems as though at best the only way I will be able to get my foot in the door is to hopefully pick up a few hours off subbing IF its available!

You don't expect to walk into a job, yet you seem surprised that you'll have to work your way up from subbing; what's the alternative?

Subbing is extremely hard to live on, and it's tough on you as a professional to not have any security, but, and particularly at this time of the year, it's all that is available. If you want to stay in Ireland you need to be optimistic about what subbing can lead to. Being in a school and knowing of maternities or retirements can put you at an advantage. Plus, having experience of teaching (and correcting if you applied for it) Project Maths in Ireland since you're not doing that in England, will also help.

aunt aggie

Seámus-Púbach wrote: »

The whole course was created due to the lack of adequately qualified maths teachers in the system, and was heavily geared towards teaching the Project Maths curriculum....

I can count on one hand how many graduates are employed in Ireland despite this.

The country is a farce is my main point! Trust me I don't or never have expected to walk straight into a job. I've done my time over in this kip off a country to get some much needed experience and it still seems as though at best the only way I will be able to get my foot in the door is to hopefully pick up a few hours off subbing IF its available!

I've been following this thread for a long time and I'm sorry to hear about your decision quinn1. It couldn't have been an easy one to make.

I graduated the year the Maths and Ed course started in NUIG and I really couldn't understand the need for it. I also found it very difficult to get work as a Maths teacher and did a few years teaching in UK as well to get some experience. There was never the lack of Maths teachers that people were always on about.

The press at the time was all about how unqualified people were teaching Maths. Mainly Science and Business teachers, who didn't study the full 60 ECTS in Maths in college. BUT many of these people were permanent so they were not going to be out of a job just because thinking on recruitment had changed. Also lots of experienced teachers were taking advantage of Open University courses to qualify to teach Maths.

I have been qualified for over 5 years and I'm only covering a Maternity Leave this year, and I'm working with 'unqualified' Maths teachers. I should also point out that most of them are brilliant Maths teachers and I don't hold their lack of qualifications against them. That's the system we work in and we can't change it.

gaiscioch

Given that the state pays the overwhelming number of teachers' salaries it could, of course, have a system for the training and supply of teachers which is similar to the way they train and supply gardaí to An Garda Síochána. A similar centralised recruitment system for teachers exists in many European countries.

This would be an intelligent, efficient use of human resources on the part of the same state which has been wont to talk about something called the "smart economy" in the past. It would be much more likely that teachers on 8 or 12-hour contracts, for instance, would be placed in something approaching fulltime hours and a liveable salary. It would also halt the general reduction in the standard of teachers' conditions because there is currently an oversupply of qualified teachers.(A cynic might suggest this is the real reason such a system has been allowed to continue by the money-conscious mandarins in the DoES.)

It would seem, however, that the Irish Department of Education is more comfortable with the current system whose principal beneficiary is the third-level colleges which offer teaching courses for jobs which do not exist - if the colleges did not have this income it is likely the state would have to subsidise them. While all those people who choose to do teaching in the full knowledge that they do not have appropriate subjects have only themselves to blame, I'm still left with the distinct impression that there is an absence of dignity in the current "breadcrumbs" system of recruitment to the Irish teaching profession. At an individual level, some people need to be protected from their own stupidity (as Paddy Honohan and many others would agree). At a collective level, the absence of a centralised recruitment system for all state-paid teachers undermines teaching as a serious fulltime, lifelong profession because today many of its members cannot eke out an existence from teaching alone simply because of the current recruitment system.