Sir, – The ongoing and multifaceted issues around teacher recruitment and retention are well documented. Indeed, your news article “No applicants for teaching jobs at 75 per cent of schools with recent vacancies” (January 30th) described how up to 20 per cent of schools are now having to drop subjects as a result of unfilled teaching posts.
The lack of meaningful solutions from relevant State bodies and various ministers for education bear a large responsibility for the current crisis but truth be told, many individual schools appear to be doing little themselves to even attempt to alleviate this issue, particularly in the area of increased workload.
A 2023 Red C Survey conducted on behalf of the Association of Secondary School Teachers of Ireland around the causes of recruitment difficulties found that 48 per cent of schools surveyed cited “Workload and intensification of teachers’ work” as a key contributing factor in struggling to attract new staff.
This could suggest that while bureaucracy has generally increased, many schools appear to be unwilling or unable to work with staff to create solutions to keeping workload manageable and conducive to proper work-life balance.
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If the Minister for Education Helen McEntee is serious about solving the qualified staffing problems in many schools, school leaders will also need to be empowered and held accountable to tackle issues pertaining to their own school contexts, such as workload. – Yours, etc,
TOM MORRIS,
Portarlington,
Co Laois.
