Teacher-sharing scheme to tackle shortages has not had any uptake

A Government initiative to tackle teacher shortages by allowing secondary schools to jointly hire staff in key subjects has not resulted in a single shared teaching post.

Many schools say they are struggling to recruit qualified teachers in key subjects, including in physics, Irish, maths, European languages and home economics.

In response, Minister for Education Joe McHugh earlier last year announced a new scheme to allow post-primary schools to share teachers in "priority" subjects.

However, figures supplied to The Irish Times show that no teacher has been jointly hired since the scheme was announced.

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When the scheme was launched, Mr McHugh said he was “confident it will make a difference and help to ease the difficulties that some schools have experienced in sourcing teachers of high-priority subjects”.

The idea behind the initiative was to allow two schools to work together to recruit a teacher in a “priority” subject for a job and employ them on more hours than if they were teaching in just one school.

No uptake

While Mr McHugh encouraged school principals and boards of management to work with neighbouring schools by hiring shared teachers, a spokesman confirmed there has been no uptake from schools in relation to the scheme.

“It is extremely disappointing even though the Minister always knew there were big challenges with a sharing scheme, whether it’s travel, timetabling or sourcing teachers to work across two schools,” a spokesman for Mr McHugh said. “The Minister is still keen to see if any schools out there want to work together.” He said planning for the 2020/21 teacher allocation process for all post-primary schools commences next month and the Department of Education will again engage with stakeholders to encourage schools to participate in the scheme.

Education observers say factors likely to be behind the lack of take-up of shared teaching posts include a reluctance to admit schools are reliant on unqualified “out of post” teachers in key roles.

There are also challenges in co-ordinating recruitment decisions, as well as unfamiliarity in working with other schools.