The Government has failed to “make a dent” in the teacher recruitment and retention crisis as “hundreds” of posts remain unfilled shortly before schools reopen after summer, the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) said.
In recent years, the union said hundreds of posts advertised online have consistently remained unfilled at this time of year despite schools working “relentlessly” to fill them.
An ASTI survey of secondary school leaders published on Thursday revealed 67 per cent of respondents said they had unfilled vacancies, due to recruitment difficulties, halfway through the last school year.
This has resulted in schools removing certain subjects, employing non-qualified teachers and reassigning special education needs teachers to mainstream classes, “adversely impacting the most vulnerable”, the union said.
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The survey, carried out by Red C in spring, also revealed 77 per cent of schools said they received no applications for advertised posts during the last academic year.
And 90 per cent said no substitute teachers were available to cover for absent teachers.
The ASTI said the survey showed “minimalist actions” taken in recent years, such as upskilling and extra training places for teachers, have “failed to reverse the chronic teacher shortage crisis”.
ASTI general secretary Kieran Christie said the changes necessary to address the issue and ensure teaching was a sustainable career “have not been acted upon”.
“It seems the Department of Education and Youth is waiting for demographic shifts to lessen the problem,” he said.
“This is not an acceptable way to treat the children and young people who are returning to school this month.”
Most schools (73 per cent) said they employed non-qualified and casual teachers.
And 42 per cent of schools, meanwhile, removed a subject or subjects from the curriculum due to recruitment issues.
Mr Christie said successive education ministers, including the present one, Helen McEntee, had been “unwilling” to make the changes necessary to address the problem.
“Fundamental changes” were required to encourage those teaching abroad to return to Ireland, he said.
Shortening the “excessively long” teachers’ pay scale and doubling the number of middle management posts in schools would be an “enormous help”.
He said the training period for new teachers should be reduced from two years to one “and the exorbitant cost of undertaking this training must be tackled”.
“Teaching in Ireland needs to be made more attractive. The enormous price being paid by children who are consistently in classrooms with no qualified teacher available to teach them will leave a long and bitter legacy,” he said.
