Many secondary schools have been struggling to fill teaching positions with hundreds of vacant posts in subjects such as maths and Irish, according to an unpublished draft study by the Department of Education.
During the last academic year there were more than 400 teaching posts at second level which were unfilled, with a further 800 occupied by teachers who were not qualified to teach the subject they were delivering.
The problems were most acute in the Greater Dublin Area where there was an average of more than three vacant posts per school which could not be filled or were reliant on “out of field” teachers to teach subjects they were not qualified for. This compares to less than one in the west of Ireland.
School principals and teaching unions argue that the housing crisis and cost-of-living issues are making it unaffordable, particularly for younger teachers, to live in the Greater Dublin Area and other large urban areas.
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Paul Crone, director of the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals (NAPD), said some schools have had to drop some subjects from their timetables, especially in more specialist areas like woodwork, engineering and construction studies.
[ A crisis years in the making: Second-level pupils in classes without qualified teachers ]
“Schools are still in the eye of the storm of teacher shortages,” Mr Crone said. “To be fair, the Department of Education has put in place a number of solutions such as upskilling and increasing the number of teaching graduates in some subjects, but it will take a few years before we see results.”
The figures are contained in a draft report by the Department of Education, dated October 2024, titled Survey of Teacher Unmet Demand in Post-Primary Schools.
The study, released to The Irish Times under the Freedom of Information Act, was based on responses from more than 600 second-level schools earlier this year.
A Department of Education spokesman said the report was still in draft form and data contained in the report has not undergone normal quality checks. It will be updated with revised information shortly.
Minister for Education Norma Foley has previously said that teaching, like other sectors of the workforce, is not immune to staff shortages given the strong competition for employees.
There are now more teachers than ever working in the Irish education system with almost 79,000 employed. Ms Foley has pointed to a 20 per cent increase in teaching graduates over the last five years as a sign of her department’s efforts to address teacher supply issues.
Ms Foley has also said the public sector pay deal means teachers’ starting salaries will increase to €46,000, rising to a maximum of €85,000 per year, which compares well internationally.
A breakdown of vacant or “out of field” teaching posts at second level show maths is the hardest subject to fill across most schools (188 vacant or out of field posts), followed by Irish (168), home economics (93), career guidance (62), PE and English (both 51).
There were also shortages of qualified staff for special education posts, with 77 schools reporting vacant teaching posts and 129 saying positions were filled by out of field teachers.
