Fiona O'Loughlin (Kildare South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There is no doubt that there is a recruitment and retention crisis in the education system, despite what the Minister and the Government say. I engage with and receive correspondence from teachers in my constituency regularly regarding the chronic shortage of substitute teachers available in our area. Four days ago, a the principal from Robertstown national school emailed me to say that having spent numerous hours of personal time over the weekend making calls and sending texts and emails, no qualified teacher was available. An unqualified teacher supervised the class for two days, after which the principal had to put the learning support teacher into the class for the remainder of the week. This deprived other children of the support to which they are entitled. There are currently no teachers available in Kildare to cover substitution and schools are unable to fill temporary or fixed-term teaching posts.

The Catholic Primary Schools Management Association survey carried out last year shows that 89.69% of schools were experiencing difficulty in sourcing substitute teachers and that there were a significant number of days when children in our schools were not taught by qualified teachers. This time last year, only 30 stand-in teachers were available nationwide to cover absences across 3,300 schools each day. The INTO have said that it would take 800 such substitute teachers to cover the schools in the State.

The Minister for Education and Skills has said that there is no evidence of a teacher shortage. This completely contradicts what public representatives are hearing on the ground. The lack of Irish language teachers risks the future of our national language and the shortage of science, technology, engineering and maths teachers threatens our economic future. Teaching needs to attract the very best graduates. Our children deserve nothing less. The shocking fact that just six physics teachers are expected to graduate in the next two years should be a wake-up call for the Minister and his Department. Shortages of teachers in Irish, home economics and European languages result in the use of out of field teachers for these subjects. Surely this is unacceptable for our education system. The Minister describes these as pinch points and I believe this drastically underestimates the gravity of the situation. The collapse in the numbers applying for teacher training courses, a drop of more than 60% between 2011 and 2017, is highly concerning. Only 600 individuals have so far applied to complete the two-year professional masters degree in education. The expense of this course is most certainly a barrier that prevents people from applying.

The cost of €11,000 is unaffordable for most students who have finished their primary degree and, without a shadow of a doubt, this is not unrelated to the inequity in pay levels and our two-tier system.

To address the crisis, full pay equality needs to be achieved, middle management needs to be restored and a recruitment and advertising campaign aimed at bringing home young teachers who are working abroad needs to be put in place. At Christmas, I met two such teachers who had come home to get married. They were working in Dubai to get together a down payment to buy a house. We need to re-establish substitute supply panels at primary level. We also need to establish a body to work with education partners in co-ordinating policy matters concerning teacher supply.

We must invest in our teachers and their professionalism and develop a long-term plan to ensure that all of our schools and children have the quality teaching professionals they need. The quality of our education system and our teachers has been widely acknowledged and a recent international review concluded that this rich resource should be highly valued. Recruitment and retention of quality teachers in our schools should be a key policy concern for all of us. The added workload and worry for principals such as the principal of Robertstown in Kildare whom I mentioned earlier and for parents, is simply unfair and needs to be addressed without delay.

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