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Secondary school teacher shortage.

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Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,864 ✭✭✭SuperBowserWorld


    The government, FFG, has no idea how to fairly and sustainably scale an economy. That's why. They are a one trick pump up property prices party.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 604 ✭✭✭HazeDoll


    The article seems to suggest that the problem is that people are reluctant to take up jobs that are part-time or fixed term. While this probably contributes to the issue, the real difficulty is that people are getting out of teaching at a surprising rate. An unprecedented number of teachers in my school applied for career breaks and jobshares for the coming school year. Two teachers left to take up jobs outside the classroom and there were a few early retirements. I don't think our place is any worse than most, and it's a lot better than some, but without a doubt the job is getting harder and harder.

    A lot of the talk in the staffroom is pipedream stuff, ideas that would allow us to get out. Open a pet farm, design and sell textiles, that sort of thing. I'm an enthusiastic contributor to these conversations but I keep finding my mind returning to the idea of getting a little job in a shop.

    I wouldn't encourage anybody to get into teaching unless they have absolutely no other options open to them.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,988 ✭✭✭Oscar_Madison


    Reckon rural areas are over subscribed with teachers and large city areas have the shortage due to house shortages and prices



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,251 ✭✭✭MegamanBoo


    I'd be interested to know specifically what people don't like about the job?

    It's something I considered but I found the teacher council requirements very strict. I have several uni qualifications including a masters but I still didn't meet the criteria. I think that's something they could open up if they want to attract more people.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,034 ✭✭✭griffin100


    End career breaks and introduce a Dublin weighting.

    The ability of teachers to disappear for years at a time to UAE and similar to earn big bucks and then be able to return into their job that was being filled on a temporary basis at a time when we have a shortage of teachers and a reluctance of teachers to take on temporary roles is mad.

    They have had a London weighting in the UK for over 100 years, yet anytime such a scheme is mentioned in Ireland the Unions shoot it down because sure Paddy in rural Donegal couldn't be expected to do the same job as Mary in South Dublin on a lesser wage.

    Teaching is a very attractive profession outside of Dublin. I know a couple of people who have changed careers to move into teaching in recent years (from consulting engineering and retail management). For a part time job it has a good salary and would allow you to buy a house outside of the major cities with the added bonus teaching jobs are country wide. However trying to live in Dublin on a teachers salary would be near to impossible as a single person I'd say.



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,125 ✭✭✭Peter Flynt


    The reality is that FF/FG don't care about public servants. Shortages of teachers ….. but also shortages of nurses, soldiers, gardaí, doctors etc ….

    Since 2008 they took the Thatcherite/Reagan chapter out of neo liberalism and applied it right across the public sector and have carried on ever since with public sector workers having "temporary" pay cuts installed for life with worse terms and conditions for life. Whatever the English do the Irish, under FF/FG, copy in spades.

    They should just privatise education and get the state out of it entirely but they want to control education as well and so are forced to entertain a charade whereby they pretend to be interested in matters education when they are nothing of the sort.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,836 ✭✭✭Brussels Sprout


    What's preventing a change so that people who leave the country do not forfeit their job? That sounds insane to me.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,588 ✭✭✭BlueSkyDreams


    What percentage of the shortage is Dublin based?



  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    Career Breaks are a disgrace, particularly when some takes a break from their career to carry on their career in another country.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 750 ✭✭✭aziz


    isn’t Michael Martin still on a career break



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,474 ✭✭✭History Queen


    Why do people think Career Breaks are the issue? I always find this interesting how people focus on career breaks as if they have any bearing on the issue.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,588 ✭✭✭BlueSkyDreams


    I would like to see a scheme aimed at key workers; teachers, nurses, guards, retail, council services etc that allows them access to cost rental or affordable housing, at scale.

    Most of the social housing that comes on stream is only available to those on low or no income, but the squeezed middle cant afford private rents or mortgages in Dublin and so are forced to leave, if they aren't living with parents.

    The govt should provide an equal number of affordable/cost rental homes vs social housing, otherwise the shortage trends will continue to grow.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,442 ✭✭✭OscarMIlde


    Ending career breaks would make it worse. You'll have people having to leave entirely when all they want is a sabbatical.

    One of the issues not helping with public sector recruitment is the post 2013 pensions. They are absolutely miserly. When people are facing high rents, high interest rates, increasing house prices and rampant inflation the knowledge that you also have to pump a significant portion of your income into ACVs to have any hope of have a liveable income for retirement. When I compare my pension to what my other half is getting from his private sector pension it's sickening.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,836 ✭✭✭Brussels Sprout


    If it makes you feel better most private sector pensions are sh1te or non-existant



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,958 ✭✭✭✭suvigirl


    I would be interested to know what it is exactly that makes people.want to leave? It's something I have considered on a temporary basis, for when I retire from my current position.



  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Education Moderators Posts: 27,316 CMod ✭✭✭✭spurious


    Give people full contract hours from the start, not these mickey mouse partial CIDs.

    Let teachers teach their classes and not spend hours (and days) in pointless, stupid meetings where outsiders (who couldn't hack it in teaching) come in and read Powerpoint presentations to them.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,125 ✭✭✭Peter Flynt


    Career breaks are not a disgrace. Many in teaching take them for a variety of reasons. I know teachers who took them to take on a full-time degree (out of their own expense) or to work temporarily seconded as a language teacher in Europe. They brought their talents and skills back to their schools to resume their careers. Some teachers take career breaks to mind their children (as this is a heavily female dominated profession) and so allow their husbands to work full-time.

    I also know of non-teachers in other careers who have taken career breaks from their jobs for very similar reasons.

    Career breaks aren't exactly a perk anymore in teaching because no one wants to do the job in Ireland anymore. They either do a year in Ireland and head to the Middle East or they just go there directly upon graduation.

    For your comfort though let me inform you that many principals (who ironically availed of career breaks themselves) are now denying career breaks to younger teachers. It's a form of revenge for that teacher leaving for the ME. By and large it makes no difference as the teacher leaves anyway.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,125 ✭✭✭Peter Flynt


    Post 2011 teachers (and other public servants) are basically getting no pension.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 604 ✭✭✭HazeDoll


    Full classrooms, mixed ability for core subjects, accommodating various special needs, parental interference, increasing behaviour problems, absenteeism, stupid stupid STUPID requirements for CPD.

    Having to be both a counsellor and a disciplinarian to kids who have been led to believe that their 'mental health' is so fragile that a night's homework might tip them over the edge.

    Brilliant ideas from a management team who got out of the classroom at the first opportunity and quickly forgot what it's really like.

    A JC course so broad and so badly defined that it's impossible to cover anything properly. Then trying to get these kids up to LC standard.

    Parents' expectation that a child who never read a book will cruise through HL LC English.

    Year heads frazzled from dealing with the nonsense that parents concoct to excuse their children's laziness or poor behaviour.

    Round-the-clock contactability. An email at midnight saying "I don't understand the homework." Choose between trying to compose a reply that gently says, "Leave me alone," or ignoring the email. Either way, it's your fault and not the kid's when the homework isn't done.

    That's just the day to day stuff. Never mind the really bad things that can happen - accidents, accusations, that sort of thing.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,892 ✭✭✭silliussoddius




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  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    Any teacher who applies for a career break to take a break from teaching, and then goes to another country to teach, should be told in no uncertain terms to get back to their job or be immediately fired.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 604 ✭✭✭HazeDoll


    Would the intention of this be to stop them leaving or to stop them coming back? Because it definitely won't stop them leaving…



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,125 ✭✭✭Peter Flynt


    Wow. You're hard. . . . A real tough guy. 🙄

    How about this?

    Teachers are laughing at principals when their career breaks are refused and just leaving anyway.



  • Moderators, Arts Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators Posts: 10,885 Mod ✭✭✭✭Hellrazer


    My daughter just qualified with her QTS from the UK - no induction in the UK completed yet.

    She wants to come back here to teach - but cant get a definitive answer on what she needs to do or how to get back here to teach - from what I gather she needs to do the induction in the UK for 2 years and then register with the teacher council here when thats completed.

    However after spending 2 years in the UK and settling down she most likely wont want to come back ever - so another teacher lost.

    There was a scheme during covid where teachers qualified abroad could carry out their induction here - they got rid of it in February.



  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    That's grand , let them leave. Then there is an open job available for the next applicant, not a temporary gig while someone is on break from their career, carrying on their career.

    I must go read the thread about teachers career breaks for a good laugh, at those entitled teachers who came back from their career break and had a good whinge that they were paid less than other teachers and their time overseas wasn't being recognised.



  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    As above, the intention is to give a permanent job opportunity to someone who is willing to work in this country. Let them leave. They can come home in their own time and apply for a new job, not walk back into their existing one and boot out somebody who has put in the (up to) 5 year shift in their place.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,474 ✭✭✭History Queen


    But other teachers aren't prevented from getting a CID by someone being on career break. You're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist presumably because you take some issue with the notion of a career break.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,788 ✭✭✭tvnutz


    Genius solution. Only they would not wait to be fired, they just resign. Which has happened in multiple schools including my own. Our school is granting career breaks so that in a couple of years the teacher is back and they haven't lost an experienced teacher. If they hadn't been granted the career break they would have just resigned, gone off to Dubai etc, made their money and walked back into a job when they return, because what's this thread about again? Oh yeah, there are no teachers! Especially in some specific subjects. We have had college students still doing their degree come in to teach Irish and other subjects because they couldn't get anyone. Career breaks are not the issue.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 32 CookingGuy


    Why not just lower the requirements and recruit from the hundreds of thousands of newcomers into the country? I mean that's the point of them right, to do the jobs we don't want to do?



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 604 ✭✭✭HazeDoll


    The situation might not be as bad in rural areas but we are definitely not oversupplied with teachers. We couldn't find anybody to take a maternity leave last year teaching German. There were only to applicants for another job and one of them was about to go on maternity leave herself. The other applicant was hopeless, worse than useless, and was maneuvered out. Back to square one, looking for a teacher.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,125 ✭✭✭Peter Flynt


    Off you go.

    Have your good laugh.

    Some people have friends.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,125 ✭✭✭Peter Flynt




  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,988 ✭✭✭Oscar_Madison


    Fair enough i take your experience. Previous articles certainly pointed to a “crisis” in Dublin City at least given the housing crisis.

    I guess starting salaries coupled with expensive homes and rents don’t help in any part of the country - experienced people have probably made roots elsewhere and have permanent position - much harder to move around the country right now than it was.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,123 ✭✭✭Backstreet Moyes


    Why don't they subsidize accommodation for teachers.

    A lot of teachers these days won't be able to afford somewhere if they could even find anywhere.

    Same thing they should be doing with healthcare staff.

    Although that would require common sense, so outside the ability of the government.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,988 ✭✭✭Oscar_Madison


    Yes - teaching has become very complicated - unruly pupils are one thing but the there’s a huge rise in mental conditions in recent years in young people and teachers now have to manage a lot more challenging behaviours - I wouldn’t do it that’s for sure and hats off to those who still do it well



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 20,832 ✭✭✭✭Donald Trump


    How about a compromise solution then. Rather than have the current sabbaticals, a teacher can leave their current role, but be guaranteed a CID if they come back within 5 years? A right of return that they can elect at any point during those 5 years to be given that CID.

    The person who takes over the actual teaching during that time can take over the full time role and keep it.

    If the CID is good enough for the person taking over under the current setup, then why would it not be good enough for the returning sabbatical taker under the above proposal?



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 604 ✭✭✭HazeDoll




  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 20,832 ✭✭✭✭Donald Trump




  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 604 ✭✭✭HazeDoll




  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 20,832 ✭✭✭✭Donald Trump


    Then my (somewhat tongue in cheek) suggestion shouldn't confuse you.

    If a CID is ok for the "stand in" when why would it not be ok for a returning sabbatical taker? Am open to hear your answer



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,988 ✭✭✭Oscar_Madison


    If there was a plenty supply of housing you wouldn't need to do that - better to place all energies into increasing housing supply and ride it out till then - subsidies have a way of increasing pressure on higher rents anyway so really only the landlords benefit



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 604 ✭✭✭HazeDoll


    A CID means your job is guaranteed until you decide to leave. If the school closes or loses numbers you get redeployed. You can take career breaks, jobshare, go on secondment, get AP posts with a CID. You have sick leave, marriage leave, bereavement leave, maternity leave. You get paid over the holidays, obviously.

    I have no idea what point you are making.

    Edit… unless you think a CID is a totally different thing from a permanent job?



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 20,832 ✭✭✭✭Donald Trump


    Yes give them a CID. The CID does not have to have your old number of hours or role. You will just remain an employee (with the benefits you mention) and you would be free to move into roles as they come up. You are just not guaranteed your specific previous role.

    Currently if Hazedoll goes on sabbatical for 5 years and Donald takes over her class, well Donald can get his CID during that time, but when Hazedoll come back he's shunted out of that specific role and Donald has to work with what is available when it comes up.

    My suggestion would just have those positions flipped at the point of return. Donald would have his "permanent" position from day 1 (with whatever normal probation). Hazedoll takes the CID she is entitled to at that time. Any arguments against it?



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,319 ✭✭✭✭Loafing Oaf


    I wouldn't encourage anybody to get into teaching unless they have absolutely no other options open to them.

    like these guys

    In a perverse way, isn't this a sign of a thriving economy, that even people with arts and other functionally useless degrees have better options than the classroom



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 227 ✭✭Soc_Alt


    it's not the governments fault. It's fault of the full time teachers and the schools themselves.

    Full time teachers going on maternity leave within the first 2 to 3 years and then out for multiple years having kids and their stand ins unable to get full time contracts as they are only maternity cover.

    it's a mess but there is silence on gender diversity in the education system in primary ans secondary school level.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,442 ✭✭✭OscarMIlde


    Yeah, cheek of women today, having kids. Dreadful business.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 990 ✭✭✭Fred Cryton


    I've been saying this for ages - the HSE and the Department of Education need to just directly fund apartment blocks, and put teachers, docters ,nurses and other front line staff in them. Charge them 25% of their net salary, no matter what pay scale they on. The added bonus is teachers love living together and intermarrying anyway. Or the department of housing could do it on their behalf, whatever. Why is this not happening?



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 604 ✭✭✭HazeDoll


    In the situation you describe here the CID is immaterial.

    In reality most people who take career breaks are on a CID. The person or people who fill in for them will get a CID of their own, provided the career breaks extends long enough.

    When the original person returns they might hope, or maybe even expect, to return to their exact role but there is no guarantee whatsoever that that will be the case. They might not even get their old classroom back! The person who filled in for them, if they have a CID, has exactly the same rights as they have.

    My role could change anyway, nothing to do with CIDs or sabbaticals. Plenty of teachers find themselves landed into LCA classes or SEN duties, or odd bits of the curriculum, because the needs of the school have changed.

    Honestly, the point you think you're making just doesn't hold up.

    And yes, your hours are protected in your CID.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,568 ✭✭✭TinyMuffin




  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,755 ✭✭✭MrMusician18


    The real issue here is that there was a baby boom in the mid to late noughties as the first wave of EU enlargement migrants had children. This bump is expected to pass through the education system in the next five or so years. There is therefore no appetite to go and increase teacher numbers permanently for a temporary blip.

    In fact, once this boom passes, the number of children entering and going through education goes into free fall.



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