Sheila Byrne was pulling pints at the Workman’s Club on Dublin’s Wellington Quay when she realised it was time to leave.
That was 2015, and Byrne (36), an English and Classics teacher, had been unable to secure a permanent teaching job after qualifying in 2011. She was working in the venue on weekends and during summer holidays to supplement her income. But when two of her sixth-year students appeared at the bar during a shift looking for a drink, Byrne’s mind was made up.
“I just thought, ‘No, this can’t be right’… [I was] serving my students pints to try and pay my rent,” she says.
Byrne left for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and took up employment at a private secondary school in September 2015. “I wasn’t coming over to save a deposit,” Ms Byrne told The Irish Times from Abu Dhabi last week. “I literally couldn’t afford to be a teacher in Dublin.”
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In 2019, she felt a strong desire to move back to Ireland. She was not happy in the school she was teaching in and “really, really wanted to come home”.
However, after speaking with teachers back in Ireland, she learned that the experience she had gained in her time in the UAE would stand for nothing. This was because she had taught in a private secondary school outside of the EU for four years.
In Ireland, primary and post-primary teachers can apply to the Department of Education for incremental credit in recognition of teaching experience gained elsewhere for the purposes of progression on an incremental salary scale.
However, under the current criteria, there is no provision for the awarding of incremental credit for experience gained teaching in private secondary schools outside the EU, though several teachers who spoke to The Irish Times reported being awarded credit for experience gained in the UK, in an exception to the rules.
Despite having a senior position at a respected fee-paying school in Abu Dhabi, Byrne says her seven years of teaching experience in the Middle East does not qualify her for incremental credit.
A refusal to recognise teaching experience gained in private secondary schools outside the EU is dissuading teachers from returning to the State, even at a time when schools are experiencing acute staffing shortages. With the school year set to start, hundreds of teaching jobs at primary and secondary level are being advertised on the Education Posts website. Principals claim the high cost of living and a chronic housing shortage are partly to blame for the situation.
The official stance around recognising experience gained abroad is, according to several teachers who spoke to The Irish Times, causing financial hardship among those opting to come back home.
“I probably would have been home years ago, but it’s too much of a financial hit … We’re paying to come home,” Byrne says.
She is much happier in her current school, but nonetheless says she would consider a move home back to Ireland at some point, though the rules around incremental credit are a deterrent.
Byrne says Irish teachers simply want to have the experience and knowledge they’ve gained abroad appreciated and recognised by the department. “[If I come back], I’m bringing back a wealth of knowledge back into the Irish system… but we’re treated like we’ve been over on holiday.”
Stephen Magrath (35) returned to Ireland in July 2021 after spending five years teaching in a private secondary school in Abu Dhabi. He secured a job at a school in Bray, and then applied to the department to have his experience in the Middle East recognised. Roughly 20 weeks into the process, he was informed that his application had been rejected.
Magrath is currently being paid €10,000 less annually than he would if his application was accepted, he says, adding that his wife, Miriam, is in the exact same boat.
The Department of Education outlined the criteria for applying for incremental credit in two circulars published more than a decade ago. The criteria, the department says, was agreed upon “in the first instance” by the Teaching Conciliation Council, a body comprised of “representatives of the teacher unions, school management bodies, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, and the Department of Education, chaired by an official of the Workplace Relations Commission”.
In a statement, the department said “the issue” of standardising incremental credit is currently the subject of consideration by a Teaching Conciliation Council sub-committee. “The department is reviewing the issues raised at the sub-committee.”
Magrath, a history teacher, says: “If they just dealt with this issue they would get so many teachers home – high quality teachers home – who have worked at really good schools who could bring a lot back. I was able to bring so much back from school I was in...There doesn’t need to be a teacher shortage.”
Sineád O’Cuinnegáin says she would not be back in Ireland if she knew of the challenges she would face on returning from Syndey. She will take up a teaching position at a school in Maynooth, Co Kildare this week, but will come in on an entry-level salary despite having 12 years of teaching experience in Australia.
O’Cuinneagáin, a religion and geography teacher, says she is facing a five-month wait before a decision is made on her application for incremental credit. The hope is, she says, that her application will at least be partially successful, but the barrier is having a real impact.
The 37-year-old, her two daughters and husband are being put up by her sister for now. With a young family and aspirations to save for a mortgage, she says finances are tight at present.
“We can’t afford rent,” she adds. “It’s very stressful and we feel like a burden.”
The pull to return to Ireland and to be close to family, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic, was strong, O’Cuinneagáin says. It is a sentiment that is echoed by many returning teachers who spoke to The Irish Times.
And yet, if these barriers to recognition of experience are not remedied, a return to Australia may be her only option.
“As heartbreaking as it would be, we have to look at the reality. And for me family is everything… but the reality is to survive,” she adds.
Martina Hanlon returned to Ireland in 2014 to teach after spending 10 years working in a private secondary school in Peru. Her experience there has not been recognised by the department. Hanlon (53), like many others, questions the rationale of the department and the criteria set out by the relevant circulars.
“I think the important point is these schools [outside the EU] are fully recognised by the country that they’re in, they comply with all the state requirements for education,” she contends.
After lobbying TDs and unions, Hanlon – along with the help of some others – set up an action group for teachers facing similar issues. Some members have commenced actions in the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) to plead their case for their experience to be recognised. But previous cases brought to the WRC by teachers in a similar position have failed.
In a statement, Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) general secretary Kieran Chirstie said that, along with the Teacher’s Union of Ireland (TUI) and the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO), the union has been “agitating for years” for incremental credit “to be extended to include teachers returning from abroad with experience in non-EU private secondary schools”.
Thus far, those efforts have been in vain, he said. “We have been arguing in recent years that such a move would incentivise teachers who are working abroad to return to Ireland and assist in ameliorating the teacher recruitment crisis we are currently experiencing.”
Other factors have only exacerbated frustration among returning teachers. Some teachers have reported being awarded incremental credits despite not meeting current criteria, leading to a perceived lack of consistency in how they are awarded.
“All this experience, all that added value that we have coming back to Ireland is basically ignored,” Hanlon says. “You’re told ‘no, go back to zero’.
“The big thing is… it’s not only a deterrent in teachers coming back, but a deterrent in the quality of teaching that the children are going to get. These people would have a wealth of experience and ideas and innovative ideas.”
