Teachers leaving Dublin schools due to accommodation costs

Fair comment as far as it goes, but you don't need a B Ed or BA/BSc+HDip to work in a shop or a restaurant. There is an investment of time that can be as much as 5 or 6 years study before you qualify as a secondary teacher which eats into your contributions. And then the several years before you get full hours. It's not all plain sailing at all.

If you work in finance, law, IT in the private sector of course you can earn multiples of what a teacher earns for the same investment of time, or even less. Medicine at least requires a long period of study, but the only thing keeping lawyers quids in is the closed shop, because it is not an exceedingly difficult course AFAIK.

Qualifications are somewhat irrelevant here.

The tread is about teachers having to leave Dublin because of the cost of living. I was making the point that the cost of living effects everyone including those who don't make anywhere near what teachers make.

Regarding the salaries of those in IT and Law. People in those professions can make multiples of a teachers salary yes, but none of them will be leaving the office at 3 either. Or taking the entire summer off for that matter.

You've gone off on a tangent there.

I didn't suggest or say children aren't entitled to an education.

My point, again, is that many many much lower paid people can live in Dublin despite the higher cost of living there. So why can't teachers?

Because they are well educated and a valuable commodity on the international market. People who work in low paid jobs generally aren't. Market economics come into play here. At the moment, due to the level of education, market value and international opertuinities we cannot keep teachers in schools in Dublin, this is leading to substandard levels of education provision in Dublin, acutely felt in poorer communiteis where the work can be very challenging. People's opinion or feelings about teaching really aren't the issue, or their perception of how hard we work, the issue is we are not renumberating them well enough to keep them compared to other markets. Same issue with nurses, who I would see a payrise go to in the morning above almost any other sector.

I laugh whe people talk about leaving work at 3.......I start around 8 and never leave before 4.....all plannning and correcting is done at home and I train teams after school. Twice this week I've had no lunch because I didn't have time. Like any job, there are of course people phoning it in but the vast majority of teachers work pretty hard........even if you can't see them at home correcting at night.

So can my darling offspring get to study law with average points in the leaving? Or is law up there like medicine?

If it is the latter, then law is a closed shop. Unless you have connections and loadsa dosh to pay for the Inns, which is another way of keeping the average person out. I mean, what level of intellect is required to convey a house? Could an averagely intelligent person learn to do it? If so, you don't need high points. The points required should reflect the difficulty of the course, not the money to be earned after finishing the course. If the points reflect the latter, or if you need a lot of money to pay for the course, then you have a closed shop.

Loadsa dosh? You can qualify as a barrister as a mature student (23+) without a strict requirement for any prior formal qualifications (in theory not even a Junior Cert) for about 23k tuition in fees total. And they have scholarships available as well for hardship cases. Their Legal Diploma is 2 years part time (so you could also work) and then you could do the BL one year full time, or two years part time. Fair enough, you might not find 23k behind the couch but you are talking about 100 quid a week for the 4 years you'd be studying if you wanted to do all the part time options in order to get into what you (incorrectly) think is a lucrative career from the start. For comparison, you probably wouldn't have any change out of your 23k by the end of the second year if you sent your child to do an Arts degree.

If you want to go and do Law in Trinity College then you will need the marks. It's a competitive process and for all it's faults, the CAO does not discriminate on any other factor except for points obtained in the Leaving Cert. So it is on merit. But you don't have the points to do it there, then you can do it it loads of other places with far less points. There are also part time degrees in the like of Griffith college. I think you can do a part time Bachelor of Laws there over three years for not a huge amount of money.

You come across as someone who tries makes excuses as to why they can't do something before someone explains to them how to do it.

P.S. an undergraduate law degree is only a stepping stone to qualify as a solicitor or a barrister. You'd still have to train as a solicitor, and for a barrister you'd still have to do the BL (plus a year or two deviling)

Can it be done? Yes. You can check the CAO website for points for last year for various courses. I have no idea what conditions you are going to impose in order to keep putting obstacles in your own way.

Can they do it? That depends on them. If they aren't able to figure out how to go about it what with universal access to technology and the internet, then perhaps not.

You are asking the question that's already been answered.... by teachers. Yet you still persist in saying that they CAN afford to live here.

Surviving is not the same as living.

But I suppose your right, there's no issue with teacher supply in Dublin then, it's all just in my imagination, and my children's school principal's as well.

You don't know if there is a teacher supply problem in Dublin?

Do you realise what forum and what thread you've been posting in?

Yes there are employee shortages in other sectors, we get that. But please read the thread title.

The damage is systemic... our social fabric is being unravelled before our eyes. There's nobody in power interested in dealing with this unravelling. The whole model of getting a good education... good job... home ownership is dead. Teachers are just collateral damage in this regard. There's no carrot/stick anymore for young people. Titanic and deck chairs spring to mind.

Living in the kind of situation you describe would only appeal to the newly qualified. Nobody other than the young/naive/clergy wants to live in a convent/monastery... while working full time. What exactly is the exit plan from such a situation? Save enough for a deposit. I see they are considering relaxing lending rules... it worked out so well last time... what could possibly go wrong.

I blame no one from bailing from this situation... teacher or student.

It's merely sticking a plaster over a very large crack. I don't think it would alleviate the problem to the degree that's needed as after a short time teacher's wouldn't put up with accommodation that is no better than a bedsit/digs.

The issues are deep rooted systemic ones. Our government really seems to have no interest in solving the problem which means building good quality, reasonably priced accommodation in the greater Dublin area (probably country wide). It's either incompetence or malfeasance on a grand scale and for the life of me I can't work out either of which applies.

Absolutely true, and anyone who cares about social equality would be acutely aware of the shortages further impacting kids from lower socioeconomic backgrounds where schools can't pay off the books for staff and parents/guardians can't afford grinds.

The new LC reforms will push those near retirement to consider leaving early just like the last set of reforms. Do you really want to engage with all the training if you've a year or two left. That won't help either.

I'd be concerned with the level of fight in the new teachers too, lots of yes sir attitude while they are being asked to do things wildly outside their contracts. Eventually these teachers burn out, sometimes before they hit 30!!

So yet again the retired teachers are being called up. I agree that they should be allowed to go back and financially incentivisee, but this is nowhere near a solution.

As for the school refusing teaching council member from attending I think the rest of the teachers on the TC should not attend meetings either in solidarity.