Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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Question 247: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Education and Skills the position regarding untrained substitute primary teachers in view of the establishment of the Teaching Council; the reason these teachers need to register with the council; if the Teaching Council is designed to eliminate substitute teachers from the education system; if there are any supports in place to enable these untrained teachers to become formally qualified teachers; if these untrained teachers have any entitlement to pensions; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [32179/10]

Mary Coughlan (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)
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It is the policy of my Department that only qualified personnel should be employed by schools. Unqualified personnel should not be appointed except in exceptional circumstances and then only when all avenues for recruiting qualified personnel have been exhausted and only for quite limited time periods.

This is now reflected in Circular 40/2010 which my Department issued earlier this year. Under its terms, schools are directed to ensure that teachers proposed for appointment to publicly paid posts must be registered with the Teaching Council and have qualifications appropriate to the sector and suitable to the post for which they are proposed. Where an employer can satisfactorily demonstrate that every reasonable effort has been made to recruit an appropriately qualified and registered teacher, an unqualified and/or unregistered person may be recruited pending the recruitment of an appropriately qualified and registered teacher and this provision must be inserted in the employment contract. The employer shall repeat the process to recruit an appropriately qualified and registered teacher within the period of any such contract and in any event within the school year. The person recruited will be remunerated at the unqualified rate.

As the Deputy is aware, the Teaching Council was established under the Teaching Council Act 2001, in March 2006 to promote teaching as a profession and the professional development of teachers, to maintain and improve the quality of teaching in the State, to provide for the establishment of standards, policies and procedures for the education and training of teachers, and to provide for the registration and regulation of teachers and to enhance professional standards and competence.

As it is desirable that there be a fully trained professional body of teachers the Teaching Council aims to promote and maintain the highest standards of teaching, learning and professional conduct in our schools.

In common with most self-regulated professions, the Teaching Council has established and maintains a register of its members, as provided for under Part 3 of the Teaching Council Act 2001. The register of teachers is intended to function as the main regulatory instrument of the Teaching Council. It stands as a verifiable expression of the standard of teaching, knowledge, skill and competence that teachers aspire to have and maintain. To be registered, a teacher must have attained a satisfactory level of professional qualification and training. Thus, the register is intended to act as a statement of the standards required of teachers. Only persons who reach these standards will be able to work as teachers in State funded positions, except in limited time bound circumstances.

In recent years the supply of qualified teachers has increased thus reducing the need for schools to employ unqualified teachers.

Persons who were not qualified but were employed as a teacher in a recognised school, and paid out of moneys provided by the Oireachtas, or eligible to be so employed on establishment of the Teaching Council were allowed to become registered under Section 31(2) of the Teaching Council Act 2001.

For these persons, and others who may have worked as substitute teachers on a temporary basis, it is possible to become formally qualified through a Postgraduate Diploma in Education held in the four publicly-funded Colleges of Education, and the private college, Hibernia, for the purpose of enabling third level graduates to qualify as primary teachers. Persons who successfully complete this course may be registered by the Teaching Council as qualified for service in the State's primary schools.

Under the primary school teachers pension scheme the service of persons employed in primary schools in an untrained capacity is pensionable on an ongoing basis where that service is given from 1 September 2001, subject to payment of appropriate pension contributions. In addition persons giving service on or after that date, may also reckon service given prior to 1 September 2001 for pension purposes subject to satisfying certain thresholds, terms and conditions including verification of the service and payment of appropriate pension contributions.