Three-quarters of secondary schools have recently advertised a teaching vacancy for which they received no applications, a survey of principals and deputy principals suggests.
Of the 111 schools that participated in the research, almost two-thirds (64 per cent) had vacancies believed to be attributable to recruitment or retention issues. Some 20 per cent said they had to drop subjects because they had no qualified teacher for them.
The survey, carried out by the Principals’ and Deputy Principals’ Association (PDPA) of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland between mid-September and early November last, found teachers of maths, Irish and French, in that order, to be the hardest for schools to recruit.
Some 84 per cent of respondents believed the Government could be doing more to attract teachers living and working abroad back to the State.
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The union said 75 per cent of schools had experience of nobody applying for an advertised job in the previous six months. It said staff shortages across the roughly 730 schools in the sector meant that even appointments often fell through after being made.
“Sixty per cent of respondents report losing teachers subsequent to the setting of the year’s timetable, while 68 per cent report situations where teachers accept a position only to later reject it,” said PDPA president Michael Murphy.
“These trends result in a logistical nightmare for principals. Schools need larger teaching allocations that would allow them to offer more attractive positions of full hours rather than just fractions of jobs.
“Teacher retention is now as big a challenge as teacher recruitment. These highly qualified graduates, who are hugely attractive to employers in other areas, must be offered enhanced career structures through more middle management opportunities. This would also greatly assist principals and deputy principals who are struggling with burnout from an ever-expanding list of duties.”
According to the survey, more than 40 per cent of schools have had to limit the access of students to particular subjects because of a shortage of teachers in these areas.
The problems being encountered, the union said, lend weight to its argument that the Government needs to be careful in relation to the pace of change to the Leaving Certificate cycle.
Teachers’ Union of Ireland president David Waters said the attitude of Government to teacher recruitment suggested it wants to “ride it out until demographics change”.
“Schools have displayed remarkable innovation in papering over the cracks, but principals have felt increasingly abandoned by Government on this issue,” he said.
He said the union looked forward to engaging with recently appointed Minister for Education Helen McEntee on the issues involved.
Ms McEntee’s predecessor, Norma Foley, said late last year that the government had examined all of the measures available to it in terms of recruitment and the number of teachers in the system was at an all-time high.
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