It is time to financially support student teachers’ education

Over the last several months the enormity of the teacher supply crisis has become ever more apparent, with key stakeholders describing the inordinate pressure the situation is placing on schools. The issue, which has been brewing for well over a decade, has been exacerbated by the current housing and cost-of-living crises.

While there are efforts to address the problem, initiatives such as enticing retired teachers back to the profession will not be sufficient given their ad hoc nature. The problem of finding qualified teachers is particularly salient for secondary schools, where teachers for subjects such as maths, physics, Irish, modern foreign languages, home economics (not to mention the new subject of computer science) are thin on the ground. This has led to schools, as reported by The Irish Times, resorting to hiring unqualified teachers and not offering particular subjects to students.

In 2019, The Irish Times expressed an opinion that young people deserve to be taught by qualified educators who have the skills to help them reach their potential. This is particularly prescient in today’s world, where the professional expertise of teachers is essential to building the critical-thinking and problem-solving skills required of young people to engage with societal issues, such as the biodiversity and climate crises, and to prepare them for an ever evolving world of work. Furthermore, qualified teachers have the necessary knowledge and skills to build their students’ confidences in their own ability, lessening their anxieties about learning particular subjects (such as maths) and encouraging them to pursue further education in areas that interest them.

The search for qualified teachers across the country ultimately leads to issues of inequity where schools (often underprivileged) do not offer higher-level mathematics or, in the case of all-girl schools, subjects such as engineering or applied mathematics. This lack of diversity of subject choice at second level directly impacts the decisions young people make about further and higher education pathways, further impacting the diversity of students choosing to pursue Stem (an acronym commonly used to represent the expansive fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics) at apprenticeship or higher qualification levels.

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This presents us with the perennial dilemma of recruiting people to the teaching profession in an era where the career of teaching is less attractive. Changes to initial teacher education over the last decade have seen the cost of earning a qualification increase exponentially, with recent research reporting the financial and psychological distress of student teachers in postgraduate programmes. This, coupled with other factors such as wage discrepancies caused by a two-tier pay system, lack of system infrastructure, and lack of career progression through subject specialism have all caused a collective erosion of the desirability of a career as a teacher.

Countries with highly-respected education systems typically value and invest in teaching as a profession. In places such as Finland and Singapore, deliberate policy measures are undertaken to raise the profile and status of teaching by financially supporting student teachers’ education. In Australia, tuition-free programmes have encouraged those from minority groups, such as Aboriginal students, to enter the teaching profession – an issue worth considering when the teaching population in Ireland remains largely unrepresentative of modern society. The most recent OECD Education at a Glance report has shown Ireland to be in the bottom ranking for public funding of education as a proportion of GDP and there remains a significant lack of economic support for recruitment to teaching programmes.

One effective way to encourage people to pursue a teaching qualification is to offer funded scholarships. Government funded scholarships, such as those offered by provincial governments in Canada, can be awarded to excellent candidates pursuing qualifications in subjects where there are teacher shortages. In the UK, scholarships offered to student teachers in chemistry and physics led to an increase in those pursuing such a qualification. This idea has recently been mirrored in Ireland through the first national scholarship established by Boston Scientific and RAISE (the Research, Application and Inclusion in STEM Education group), which was awarded to an undergraduate student teacher from Maynooth University. The initiative, with a large number of applicants garnered from across the country, demonstrates the desirability of such offerings in the Irish context and supports the value of scholarships in raising the profile and appeal of careers in teaching. The availability of student teacher scholarships targeting key subjects would raise the profile of such qualifications and incentivise more people to pursue the path. Something that can be supported by both public or private industry.

If Ireland is to maintain the integrity of its internationally renowned education system, steps must be taken to increase the attractiveness of the teaching profession here. This is particularly necessary considering the (2021) prediction from the Department of Education that the system will need over 4,000 additional post-primary teachers in the next five years, based on population statistics. Worryingly, this same report predicted a teacher undersupply would only exist up to 2021, despite an additional prediction of increased enrolment at post-primary level in the next few years and failing to take into account demands for individual subjects.

Historically, teaching has been a valued and attractive profession in Ireland. It is urgent that the Government takes steps to support its elevation if we are to start finding solutions to the national teacher supply crisis.

Dr Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin is assistant professor at UCD’s school of mathematics and statistics, and Dr Thomas Delahunty is assistant professor at Maynooth University’s Department of Education.