Q about getting into teaching at 32

PlayByTheRules

Hi all, after 10years of working in the private sector I am considering getting into teaching. Currently living in Dublin. Not decided on primary or secondary yet but enjoy educating at all levels. One thing that I have noticed is so many people are telling me I will struggle to find a permanent role.

This made me think about how this can be. In a city with a rapidly growing population like Dublin where there are far more lucrative types of work out there, how is it that we seem to have too many teachers or not enough teaching jobs???

Killergreene

Every Tom dick and Harry with a parchment does hibernia flooding the market with poor standard teachers who are hard to differentiate when it comes to interviews.

Crazyteacher

As does UCC, DCU, UCD, Maynooth Uni, TCD, and UL . Masses of qualified teachers coming out every year and no jobs available unless you have maths, home EC , or Irish !


Op what is your degree in ?

PlayByTheRules

Crazyteacher wrote: »

As does UCC, DCU, UCD, Maynooth Uni, TCD, and UL . Masses of qualified teachers coming out every year and no jobs available unless you have maths, home EC , or Irish !


Op what is your degree in ?

Business Studies. I am fluent in Irish though and speak it at home so interesting to know that it is in demand.

joebloggs32

PlayByTheRules wrote: »

Business Studies. I am fluent in Irish though and speak it at home so interesting to know that it is in demand.

Business is particularly hard to get work in at second level, and being fluent at Irish is not enough to teach it. You need to have studied it to degree level. You would be better off looking at primary, but as many will tell you landing a job is not easy, particularly if you are tied geographically to one location.

TheDriver

Killergreene wrote: »

Every Tom dick and Harry with a parchment does hibernia flooding the market with poor standard teachers who are hard to differentiate when it comes to interviews.

Have you statistics that hibernia graduates are poor quality as my experience is they are as high a quality as anyone else

Killergreene

Anecdotal evidence. Have you a chip on your shoulder over something?

h2005

Killergreene wrote: »

Anecdotal evidence. Have you a chip on your shoulder over something?

Can't beat a good anecdote!

me_right_one

What about an engineering or physics degree? Many jobs available there?

Tom Dunne

Killergreene wrote: »

Anecdotal evidence. Have you a chip on your shoulder over something?

Evidence based practice is a key tenet of education policy. If we all based our practice on anecdotal evidence, things would get pretty messy pretty quickly.

Rosie Gold

In fairness there are way too many teachers qualified now. Even the INTO have come out and said that Hibernia are churning out too many teachers. No online course will ever replace a face to face course to train teachers to the best standard they can possibly be. Will other practical professions ever be trained in more or less an online way, no! Also, it's been stated many times on here that Hibernia is a private college and aren't particularly fussy who they take in as long as they make up the numbers.

I know principals who point blank refuse to take Hibernia trainees on TP nor will employ any after. Why would they want to replace a system of training graduates that was already working. The only reason it was established was to make up for a shortfall of qualified teachers over 10 years ago now. Now the complete opposite is true. It's sad when fantastic teachers can't get work now. Sorry but of all these things are been said in staffrooms up and down the country. Like it or not!

mtoutlemonde

Rosie Gold wrote: »

In fairness there are way too many teachers qualified now. Even the INTO have come out and said that Hibernia are churning out too many teachers. No online course will ever replace a face to face course to train teachers to the best standard they can possibly be. Will other practical professions ever be trained in more or less an online way, no! Also, it's been stated many times on here that Hibernia is a private college and aren't particularly fussy who they take in as long as they make up the numbers.

I know principals who point blank refuse to take Hibernia trainees on TP nor will employ any after. Why would they want to replace a system of training graduates that was already working. The only reason it was established was to make up for a shortfall of qualified teachers over 10 years ago now. Now the complete opposite is true. It's sad when fantastic teachers can't get work now. Sorry but of all these things are been said in staffrooms up and down the country. Like it or not!

I can't agree with this. I have seen Hibernia students on TP and they have more of a workload than I ever had doing my dip. I have also worked with Hibernia graduates and they are as good as anyone else.

It also appears to be well structured - I did my dip a few years ago and it was the most dis-organised course I have ever done - I definitely couldn't do two years with them.

Hibernia also gives people who may not have the required points to do the Masters a chance to teach. And before anyone says it - just because someone has the required points to do the 'regular' dip - doesn't make them a good teacher. We may be losing out on good teachers.

I don't think the op started a anti-Hibernia thread - he/she was looking for information about going into teaching.

mtoutlemonde

Killergreene wrote: »

Every Tom dick and Harry with a parchment does hibernia flooding the market with poor standard teachers who are hard to differentiate when it comes to interviews.

That's a very unfair statement. There are plenty of poor standard teachers who did the dip in one of the universities listed already.

Rosie Gold

mtoutlemonde wrote: »

That's a very unfair statement. There are plenty of poor standard teachers who did the dip in one of the universities listed already.

The vast majority are great teachers. My point still stands that nothing will ever ever replace the traditional way of training teachers- hands on and active learning just like the curriculum. I had a fantastic experience with my BEd course. I wish every graduate was trained the way I was and had such a high criteria for level of entry. Lowering standards in teaching of all professions is a disgrace imho.

evolving_doors

Ok enough of the sweeping generalisations/anecdotal 'evidence' /Hibernia bashing/BEd Superciliousness. It's not a thread for apportioning blame.

Feel free to open a thread on the supply aspect of teachers though.

MOD

Rosie Gold

Gebgbegb wrote: »

Ok enough of the sweeping generalisations/anecdotal 'evidence' /Hibernia bashing/BEd Superciliousness. It's not a thread for apportioning blame.

Feel free to open a thread on the supply aspect of teachers though.

MOD

In fairness the OP asked why there seems to be so few jobs with such an increasing population. People who are living the reality of being highly trained but struggling to find work and struggling to support their families and the responsibilities of life answered very honestly. I know a hell of a lot people who feel the same as I do. You are showing your bias there for certain courses actually.

mtoutlemonde

Rosie Gold wrote: »

In fairness the OP asked why there seems to be so few jobs with such an increasing population. People who are living the reality of being highly trained but struggling to find work and struggling to support their families and the responsibilities of life answered very honestly. I know a hell of a lot people who feel the same as I do. You are showing your bias there for certain courses actually.

Its not Hibernia's fault there are no jobs in teaching. We are all teachers whether trained by one of the teacher training universities or via Hibernia- it shouldn't make a difference. The reason why there are no jobs is due to the rigidness of the Department of Education. Getting a teaching job isn't easy - its down to being in the right place at the right time and making a good impression either at interview or subbing. And it's not always pull either - the usual rubbish - the GAA player/principals son/daughter etc. If you're good at your job/have experience and good references - you'll get that job sometime - you must be patient. And saying Hibernia trained teachers are poorly trained/lack qualifications etc. won't get you too far. We are all professional and deemed that by the Teaching Council so there shouldn't be a them and us depending on when you trained.

Rosie Gold

mtoutlemonde wrote: »

Its not Hibernia's fault there are no jobs in teaching. We are all teachers whether trained by one of the teacher training universities or via Hibernia- it shouldn't make a difference. The reason why there are no jobs is due to the rigidness of the Department of Education. Getting a teaching job isn't easy - its down to being in the right place at the right time and making a good impression either at interview or subbing. And it's not always pull either - the usual rubbish - the GAA player/principals son/daughter etc. If you're good at your job/have experience and good references - you'll get that job sometime - you must be patient. And saying Hibernia trained teachers are poorly trained/lack qualifications etc. won't get you too far. We are all professional and deemed that by the Teaching Council so there shouldn't be a them and us depending on when you trained.

Of course it makes a difference, they're so poorly trained. I was doing a course last year with other resource teachers- one teacher who came from Hibernia started talking about all the 'slow learners' she taught. What the absolute fook! Can't even train them to use the correct terminology. I would just love to know what criteria there is for accepting people onto the course. The whole thing is a shambles and has brought the profession of teaching in Ireland into disrepute. If you think I'm the only person who thinks like that, I wish I had a dictaphone for every negative thing that had mentioned about it!

mtoutlemonde

Rosie Gold wrote: »

Of course it makes a difference, they're so poorly trained. I was doing a course last year with other resource teachers- one teacher who came from Hibernia started talking about all the 'slow learners' she taught. What the absolute fook! Can't even train them to use the correct terminology. I would just love to know what criteria there is for accepting people onto the course. The whole thing is a shambles and has brought the profession of teaching in Ireland into disrepute. If you think I'm the only person who thinks like that, I wish I had a dictaphone for every negative thing that had mentioned about it!

That's your experience - not mine - any teachers or student teachers I have worked with are every bit as competent as the university trained teachers. As I said, I would have liked my dip year to be as structured as Hibernia.

It was asked earlier, what evidence have you to show that they are poorly trained?

That was one person you meet from Hibernia - she is representative of all the students they 'churn out'?

If you go to their website - you can see their criteria.

We will have to differ on our opinions about Hibernia but as you are looking for work - don't air your opinions too loud because you don't know who is listening.

TheDriver

As a Principal, I see a lot of various teacher training placements and graduates. Hibernia is no different in the standard and quality than the vast majority of others. There are the odd person from every course that is dreadful and others which excel far beyond the usual placements. Do I like students coming for placements? Yes and No because its nice to have some new faces but also theres a lot of work in getting classes together and this is where Hibernia can be tedious due to the large number of hours they require a week on the placement. But this is no reflection of the quality of placement, graduates or course content.
OP: Its a tough road to teaching. Maybe you should try a few days in a school that would allow you in. You would need to be registered in 2 subjects in reality to have a chance of picking up work, business studies are plentiful. Being able to speak Irish could help

hockey21

Hi iv been a primary teacher for over 13 years and I see subs going around subbing from 5 to 10 years. The market does seem to be flooded at the
Minute and what makes it worse are the panels. The panels absorb all the permanent jobs so your best bet is to get panel rights. Which are not easy to get you have to work for over 500 days to get them which usually takes a sub between 3-5 years and then you have to be on a certain pay scale to secure panel rights for The second panel which is the supplementary panel and then u are not even guaranteed a job from the second panel you are guaranteed a job if you get on the main panel.
Which involves having a temporary job for two consecutive years which gives u cid. This sounds easy but extremely hard to get subbing 5 days a week let alone secure a temporary position. They re like gold dust. It's a very difficult road to travel
So you would want to be sure you are in a financial situation to be unemployed many days and not get paid for holidays. Teaching sounds lovely it is a great job but very hard to get in to it definitely could take 8 years to secure permanent employment. Best of luck anyway.

Killergreene

Hibernia saturates the market with graduates. The criteria for entry to hibernia is lower than the other colleges. Their programme of training is less established and more open to deficiencies than the more standardised training done in trinity ucd UL etc.

PlayByTheRules

Thanks for all the answers, I have a better understanding now of the current market conditions and the need to be financially secure to go down this route.

Tom Dunne

I've just spent some time reviewing reports on the QQI website on Hibernia (sure what else would you be doing during Christmas week?). There is ample evidence there to confirm the academic standards, the policies and the procedures of Hibernia meet both national and international norms.

So any suggestions of low standards are not supported by the evidence.

evolving_doors

...and on that academic note...and taking into account the op's recent post...

/Thread closed/

For new posters, thanks for giving your two cent, but please take time to read the charter.

Mod