Education

Teacher shortages are jeopardising children’s education. Where are the urgent solutions?

Opinion: The response of education authorities to this growing crisis has been inadequate

Cropped image of school kids in uniform walking together in a row through corridor. Focus on legs of students walking through school hallway. istock school classroom

Judith Harford
Brian Fleming
Tue Jun 13 2023 - 15:41

As the school year ends, it is clear that the teacher supply crisis is not abating. Almost five years have elapsed since we first wrote an opinion piece on this topic, in which we identified a number of strategies to tackle the problem.

These included the restoration of the common basic salary scale; the provision of additional funding for those undertaking teacher education programmes; measures to reduce the “leakage” of qualified teachers choosing other careers, to encourage those working in the system to remain and to motivate others already abroad to return; as well as protocols for reducing the casualisation of the profession.

While such strategies would have necessitated significant expenditure, we argued that this was justified in the context of the importance of sustaining a high-quality education system.

Reliable data

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Out-of-field teaching is the term used when someone is employed to teach a subject(s) in which s/he does not have the necessary qualifications. It has been a common feature of the Irish education landscape for decades. In 2012, an international review panel was convened to examine the structure of initial teacher education provision in Ireland. The panel noted that the absence of reliable data on both the supply and demand of teachers had led to an increased reliance on out-of-field teachers at post-primary level, and called for the development of a more effective modelling of the supply and demand for new teachers “as a matter of urgency.”

Unfortunately the authorities in the Department of Education and the Teaching Council did not seem to share this sense urgency. It wasn’t until 2018 that a Teacher Supply Steering Group (TSSG) was set up within the Department.

Initially, the group consisted of senior officials of the Department and representatives of various bodies including the Teaching Council and the higher education institutions. Subsequently, representatives of the management bodies were co-opted. It is noticeable, however, that organisations whose members were dealing with the teacher supply issue on a day-to-day basis such as the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals (NAPD), the Irish Primary Principals Network (IPPN) and the three teacher unions were not invited to participate.

Piecemeal

In November 2018, the Department produced an action plan on teacher supply arising out of the work of the TSSG and its subgroups. We evaluated this plan in this opinion column.

The plan contained 19 proposals to address the problem of teacher supply at post-primary level. Of these, four were designed to promote teaching as a career choice; two others outlined that consultation was to be undertaken with stakeholders; a commitment was made to a review of teacher education programmes; five committed to the provision of additional places in teacher education; and two called for greater attention to be paid to the school placement process, including a review of the implementation of existing guidelines.

Action was promised in the case of teachers on job-share, their colleagues on career break, those seeking registration and steps were taken to facilitate the sharing of teachers across schools. Noticeably vague, one action point noted the Department would “explore the provision of additional supports for postgraduate initial teacher education students.”

This subsequently emerged as a “hardship fund” for those undertaking the PME (professional master’s of education – formerly the “HDip”), a beneficial but far from transformative initiative. The possibility of reviewing the cost of the PME agreed at the very first meeting of the TSSG in March 2018 has, it seems, not yet been addressed. It would appear that to date the issue of the casualisation of the profession has also not been effectively assessed.

Subsequent initiatives included allowing teachers to take classes over and above the usual maximum hours, permitting those who qualified abroad to apply for registration and complete their induction in Ireland and the establishment of panels to address the issue of substitute teaching duties. A later suggestion that schools would share teachers, which has resurfaced as a strategy recently, displayed a lack of understanding on the part of the authorities regarding the realities of school timetabling as well as a lack of insight into the significance of the role of the teacher beyond the classroom.

In subsequent contributions we pointed out that although some of the initiatives taken would help, none was nearly radical enough to solve the problem. The description of such initiatives in an editorial on the topic as “sticking plaster solutions” chimed with our earlier analysis.

In March 2023, the Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland (ASTI) carried out a survey of members on the impact of the teacher supply crisis in their schools since August 2022. It emerged that almost all of the schools who responded had experienced teacher supply problems. Two-thirds described these as ‘a lot of recruitment difficulties.’ Three-quarters had advertised vacancies which elicited no applications while 88% had experienced situations where no qualified substitute teacher was available.

Around the same time, the Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI, 2022) carried out a survey of principals and deputy principals in which 91 per cent reported recruitment and retention difficulties and 61 per cent reported unfilled teaching posts.

Is the Department “playing for time” and waiting for changing demographics to address the problem?

Inertia

By any reasonable standard the response of the Department, successive ministers, and the Teaching Council to this growing crisis has been inadequate. More than a decade since the Sahlberg Report’s recommendation that a more effective modelling of the supply and demand for new teachers should be developed as a matter of urgency “in the interest of maintaining an adequate supply of high calibre entrants to the profession” this remains undeveloped.

Identifying the reason for this ponderous approach to the crucial issue of teacher supply and demand is far from straightforward. Three possibilities come to mind.

First, it’s a simple case of inertia, a case of a big body moving very slowly, an issue which others in the policy community have in the past signalled.

Alternatively, is it the case that the authorities do not consider out-of-field teaching to be a serious problem? Surely there is an inherent contradiction in an education system that requires an Inspectorate to issue reports on the quality of teaching and learning in schools while failing to ensure that appropriately qualified personnel are available in each and every classroom.

A third possibility is that it is a considered strategy, albeit an unarticulated one. Demographic trends indicated that the numbers enrolled in primary schools were due to peak in 2018 and gradually decline thereafter. This pattern then repeats at post-primary level with the peak due to be reached in 2024.

In recent contributions on the topic, we pondered the possibility that the Minister and the Department might be “playing for time” and waiting for the changing demographics to address the problem.

The lack of a serious policy response in recent times lends credence to that explanation. Whatever the explanation, it is clear that this policy failure is jeopardising our education system and needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency. The evidence is that our younger citizens, particularly the most vulnerable, are losing out. Significant and comprehensive action on this issue is long overdue.

Professor Judith Harford and Dr Brian Fleming are academics at UCD’s school of education

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