Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will tell the Deputy where my head is at the moment. It is the same for people who decide to become secondary school teachers and the education colleges which are clustered around six centres. There is no distinction made in our funding for certain types of teacher. Three years ago the Independent News and Media group ran a campaign to find out how many qualified mathematics teachers there were in the country. We do not know. The nearest we can get to the figure is that the Teaching Council tells us the first subject listed when a teacher registers. The Teaching Council Act was enacted in 2001 and will go live in a week’s time. When it goes live, the Deputy will probably be petitioned by people with hardship stories. We virtually sent out officials with hot-water bottles to ask why they will not sign up and register with the Teaching Council.

The vast majority of teachers are paid with taxpayers' money and they will not get a cheque in the post the following week. There are still numbers of teachers who will not sign up. The members should not be surprised if Joe Duffy has an agony programme about teachers who served the community very well and have been cut off. That will not stop members tabling parliamentary questions but that will be the reason behind it. I am thinking aloud when I say that we could say to the third level colleges that we need more qualified science teachers and maths teachers. We could say to those colleges and universities providing a course which is the successor to the higher diploma for secondary teachers that we will only fund them if a certain percentage of their graduate students are studying to be mathematics teachers or converting their science degree to qualify as a mathematics teacher. As the Minister of State, Deputy Cannon, said, it goes back to what we need in the education system, what skill sets are required by industry and what we are providing by way of teachers. Most other governments and countries have a manpower policy in the world of education. They endeavour to tailor the qualifications of the cohort of teachers coming into the system to meet the needs of the student body. We do not have this. It is not needed in the primary system because teachers teach children in the collective round. However, in the case of subject teaching at secondary level the qualifications of teachers need to be aligned with the needs of the curriculum. Historically we have not done this but we will need to do it.