‘Young teachers have a vocation – I would hate to lose them’

Failure to address the issue of equal pay for new entrants could lead to dedicated young teachers leaving the country, an ASTI representative on the picket line has warned.

Miriam O'Donovan, ASTI steward at St Aloysius's Secondary School in Cork city, said she feared the Government's intransigence in refusing to restore pay to pre-2010 levels for new entrants could have a long term detrimental effect on the quality of Irish education.

“These new entrants being are paid approximately €8,000 per annum less even though they are every bit as professional, every bit as dedicated and every bit as competent as their colleagues who entered before 2010,” she said.

“I am very impressed by the calibre of people coming into the profession but I think there is a real risk now that we are going to lose that up and coming generation of fine young people who are willing and have a desire to teach but won’t because of the new pay rates.

“It’s an old-fashioned word but I firmly believe that these people have a vocation to teach – it’s more than a profession, it’s a calling – I would hate to lose those people to the profession and they will go to other countries to teach and they will be rewarded elsewhere for their hard work.”

Ms O'Donovan said it reminded her of the situation she encountered while teaching in Wales in the 1980s when the Conservative government adopted a similar approach with disastrous consequences for the British education system.

“I taught in south Wales for a short period during a career break and the decision taken by the Thatcher government at the time drove teachers out of the profession in their hordes and it resulted in people coming into the profession without the proper qualifications,” she said

“When the Conservative government discovered they had a shortfall, they decided to bring in non-qualified staff – if you had any kind of university qualification at all, you could apply to get a teaching job and it’s only now that education in Britain is beginning to recover from that approach.”

Speaking on the picket line on Tuesday with fellow ASTI members from the 22-strong staff at St Aloysius’s school, which caters for 326 pupils, Ms O’Donovan said teachers did not want to be on strike but responsibility for that lay with the Government.

“We have had great public support. It’s been terrific but we are very concerned for all our pupils – our exam classes in particular but all our classes. We want to be in there teaching, we don’t want to be out picketing on the side of the street if we can possibly help it.

“But these are very important issues to highlight. You can’t allow the profession to be treated in this fashion forever and not do anything about it – it has to be highlighted for everyone to realise that there are implications for the quality of education and the government needs to address that,” Ms O’Donovan said.