Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is great that students in their third and fourth year at teacher training college can now register with the Teaching Council. In their five years of training, gardaí go on the beat. In the same way, nurses go on the wards and teachers go on teaching practice. The teaching practice stint could be a lot longer. It could involve not just shadowing a teacher in the classroom environment but being let off for a full term at the end. This would really help teachers. The best way to learn is to be on your feet, teaching a class of kids with the chalkboard or whiteboard behind you. That is where you learn best. It would be great if the colleges of education, which already provide for teaching practice, could elongate the final placement and allow students to teach the real curriculum day to day, rather than always teaching to a fixed lesson plan. That would also alleviate some of the current staffing challenges.