Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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7. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills his plans to implement the recommendations of the teacher supply in Ireland technical working group report Striking the Balance; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [31560/17]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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Will the Minister confirm if he proposes to establish a standing group to supply, and plan for, the future needs of the teaching profession in our schools at primary and at secondary level? Does he accept the recommendations, which are a simple set of regulations, of the technical working group to plan for an adequate and appropriate supply of teachers at primary and secondary level?

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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The final report of the technical working group on teacher supply, Striking the Balance, was published on 9 June 2017. The report focuses on the development of a model of primary teacher supply, while outlining the work which will be required to establish a sustainable long-term model of post-primary teacher supply.

Officials of my Department are now considering how the development of a model can be progressed, from within available resources. The necessary actions will include engagement with the Higher Education Authority, HEA, in order to ensure that the supply of teachers meets demand and there is the correct balance of teachers in each of the various subject areas, as well as measures to address data requirements, in particular at post-primary level.

The Deputy will be aware that, in conjunction with the publication of the report, I announced a number of measures to increase the pool of teachers available to schools, in particular, to fill short-term vacancies. These measures are to be considered over the coming period with a view to having them in place, where appropriate, for the beginning of the 2017-2018 school year. They include: ensuring, in as far as is possible, that as many retiring and retired teachers remain on the Teaching Council register; increasing the limits for employment for a teacher while on career break; bringing to the attention of schools that final year BEd and professional masters in education students may be employed in schools for periods of up to five consecutive days.

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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I thank the Minister for his reply but I am not any the wiser. Is he going to establish a standing group? He said he had just published this report but it has been available for some time. Does he propose to accept the recommendation in the report on the establishment of a standing group? The report references what is required in primary education. There would seem to be a very broad consensus around that. It also suggests approaches in regard to secondary education and teacher supply.

With respect to secondary education, can the Minister indicate how many extra teachers at primary and secondary levels he proposes will be employed next year to meet the growing population of the country? A bad practice has developed at secondary level - not primary level - that should be ended. There has been a practice in some schools of splitting full-time jobs where two or more teachers end up getting bits of jobs and only a relatively small number of hours. That is very unfair to many people entering the teaching profession. Does the Minister propose to do anything about that?

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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At this stage, the Department is considering whether to establish a steering group and it is assessing what would be the nature, role and composition of such a group if it was put in place, and whether the internal resources of the Department could contribute to achieving some of the new data that are necessary to develop a model. The Teaching Council when it examined this admitted that it was a highly complex area. Despite its working group having worked on this for quite a considerable period, it was not able to develop a model that it considered to be robust. A good deal of work would have to be done to achieve this. The Department is quite rightly examining if it can we do this within existing resources and, if not, obviously it would be a matter that would have to be considered in the budgetary context. We have taken some short-term measures to deal with that. We will examine other potential short-term measures such as conversion courses and so on.

In terms of the projection for next year, we have already made provision for the coming September, and with respect to the following September, it is anticipated there will still be demographic growth at primary level but it is coming to an end. The main area of growth in enrolments after that will be at second level, as the bulge moves through the population pyramid.

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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Will the Minister indicate if he will end the practice I mentioned, which is unfair to new people entering the teaching profession. For the past three years hundreds of extra teachers have been employed every year and some schools are splitting the jobs at second level, part of that obviously is a function of subjects. It is not fair that quite a number of younger graduates in their third and fourth year of teaching at second level are ending up with bits of hours or travelling between one school and another when, with the type of co-ordination that was talked about in the standing group's report, they could get a full-time job. If we want some of our brightest and best young people to commit to becoming involved in teaching and building a rewarding career, there comes a time, certainly when they are in their third or fourth year of professional work, that they should have a full-time job.

That is what the country needs. We voted the resources to the Minister's Department to do that. That is what a committee or standing group such as this would do. It would address some of these issues. It would not necessarily land on the Minister's desk on every occasion, where he would have to reinvent the wheel. It could be done by the teaching profession itself at the various levels. There are also issues with Gaelscoileanna and how they are provided with an adequate supply of teachers.

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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Between September of last year and this coming September, my Department will have employed 4,800 additional teachers. We are making a very substantial investment to respond to the demographic pressure. To date, we have not had difficulty in recruiting. There are difficulties in some areas, such as substitution, as the Deputy noted correctly, but we have also made some changes to make it easier for teachers to get permanency and to develop posts for promotion. Part of the negotiations that we successfully concluded with the unions will make teaching more attractive and we hope we can meet the need even in these more difficult areas where there are particular subject problems.

The difficulties identified by the Teaching Council were not those of inactivity by the Department. They were the sheer difficulty of forecasting things such as migration, subject choices, the choices which might be made by people with, for example, a degree in physics, how many of them might choose to go into education, and how a reliable forecasting model might be developed for that. The council recognises that these are very difficult issues for which to find a satisfactory forecasting model which is why this work will take some time.