Hundreds of qualified teachers face dismissal after five years unless they pass a demanding Irish exam with no textbooks, syllabus or support.Is it time to rethink the need for teachers to learn Irish to degreestandard, asks Louise Holden
The jobs of hundreds of teachers are being threatened by a blind spot at the heart of State policy on the Irish language. People trained outside the Republic coming to teach in the national school system are becoming trapped in a costly cycle of failed attempts at the dreaded Scrúdú Cáilaíochta sa Ghaeilge.
Since the foundation of the State, National School teachers have been required to learn Irish to degree standard. This is taught as part of the primary-teaching curriculum in colleges of education. Teachers who have trained outside the Republic, however, must sit the mysterious Scrúdú or SCG. They have five years to pass the exam before they are dismissed, or have their salaries slashed to reflect their unqualified status. There are hundreds of teachers in this position and one, Janet Doherty from Donegal, has already lost her job.
The SCG is mysterious because there are no textbooks, study notes or learning resources available. There is no set syllabus for the exam - students can be asked about anything from 17th century poetry to international terrorism. The Department of Education provides a 10-week part-time SCG course, but only in urban centres, and participants must pay a fee.
Teachers who cannot access these classes are forced to find and pay for local private tuition. Ironically, those with no background in the language find it hardest to access Department of Education programmes, which are chiefly aimed at teachers who studied Irish to Leaving Cert level. In some cases, teachers learning the language from scratch are required to achieve near-fluency with no support or guidance from the Department whatsoever.
Severe staff shortages in the primary school sector in the last decade prompted the Department of Education to recruit beyond the Republic. Qualified teachers came from Northern Ireland and Britain on assurances that they would be helped to pass the SCG and to gain full qualification here. However, teachers like Suzanne McCanney from Tyrone now hear the bell toll for their careers in the Republic.
"I have been teaching in a two-teacher school in Co Leitrim for the past four years. I trained in England and was never taught Irish at school. I have paid for and completed countless Irish courses and have gone from complete beginner level to fluency. However, I have not passed all my SCG exams and am facing the very real threat of half pay after spending a fortune to learn this language." McCanney's five years are up, and although she has been granted a 12-month extension, she is considering resigning her post and returning to Northern Ireland.
The SCGs are reaching critical mass - a single meeting in Dublin last month attracted 50 people and many more emailed their concerns to the organisers. While exact figures are not available, there are thought to be at least 200 teachers under the shadow of the SCG axe.
Kerry Bourke, who organised the meeting, trained and worked in Liverpool and left a permanent job there for the promise of a new teaching career in thsi State. She spends three hours a week in Irish grinds, paid for from her own pocket, to attain a qualification she thought she had completed in Liverpool.
At the moment, she is using Irish in the classroom and her colleagues help by taking her Irish classes while she covers other subjects. Bourke is happy to learn the language and recognises the value of retaining a strong culture of Irish in the National School system. What she cannot understand is why the Department has set the bar so high.
"The scope of the SCG is massive," says Bourke. "It is a harder exam than that taken by teacher trainees in the colleges of education - at least they have a syllabus they can follow. Leaving Cert Honours Irish students are failing the SCG. It bears no relation to Irish as it is taught in the primary classroom." Bourke, like every other SCG student, knew that the Scrúdú was part of the deal when she came to work in Ireland. What she didn't know was how difficult it would be to pass such a taxing exam.
And it is taxing; despite what's at stake the failure rate is high. Last year more than half of all students failed Paper II, which deals with the teaching of Irish in the classroom. For a student coming from outside the Republic, attaining degree level Irish in five years of part-time study is a serious challenge, especially as the language is not commonly spoken here. It's not quite as difficult for an Irish student who has trained abroad, or for a northern student with knowledge of the language, but it's still a lot to ask.
Celine Ryan from Sacred Heart, Sruleen, in Clondalkin, Dublin, has already failed the SCG once and is worried about her next attempt, with only two years to go until her time is up. She did her postgraduate teacher training in Wales, but has a primary honours degree in Irish from NUI Maynooth.
The SCG group are not looking for an exemption from learning Irish. They want the exam to reflect the language needs of primary school teachers in the classroom. They want learning resources and financial assistance. They believe that training should be more accessible and that evaluation should take classroom performance into account. If they can't get any of these concessions, they ask for one basic resource - a documented syllabus.
Some concessions have already been made. The Irish National Teachers' Organisation successfully lobbied for the modularisation of the SCG three years ago and teachers can now take the exam in sections and bank them. The Department is currently considering the introduction of a new syllabus that places more emphasis on communication and less on writing and literature.
Meanwhile the SCG group are looking beyond the Department of Education and Science and examining whether their labour rights as EU citizens are being infringed. They have also raised queries with the office of the Tánaiste about the legality of paying unqualified rates to qualified teachers.
If the Scrúdú is not reformed, more teachers trained outside the Republic will be squeezed out of the system after five years. There are those who believe that this inequality is being perpetuated to fill a temporary staffing gap while the Colleges of Education bring the primary trainee numbers back up to pre-1990 levels.
Many SCGs students feel taken advantage of, especially those who were actively recruited by the Department. The SCG was originally designed with the purpose of preserving the Irish language - only the Department of Education knows what purpose it is serving now.
