Recruiting and retaining teachers

Sir, – Recent articles and letter writers have all correctly identified some of the reasons behind the long-running teacher recruitment crisis: the cost of living in Dublin, attractive alternative employment in the private sector and the exorbitant cost of completing a professional teaching qualification, to name but a few.

What’s generally missing from any analysis of the crisis is a focus on who should be involved in solving it. Take, for example, the recent public sector pay talks. If the negotiated deal goes ahead, teachers will suffer a pay cut due to inflation despite the so-called “pay increase” that is on the negotiating table. Even in the absence of inflation, this deal is only helping to restore teacher pay to pre-economic crash levels.

The deal will therefore make the recruitment crisis even worse. It will not help solve the problem. Given this reality, why are there not significant public objections to the deal from the patrons of our schools, parent groups, the representative body of school principals, the Teaching Council and anybody else who feels they have an interest in our educational system?

Perhaps all the powerful and interested education stakeholders would be better off trying to help sort the problem out at source. One way to do that is to publicly agitate against the proposed pay offer. The issue is too important to leave to toothless unions that appear unable or unwilling to negotiate a deal that will significantly help. – Yours, etc,