MORE THAN 2,000 student teachers due to qualify this summer will be unable to find teaching posts in September, according to training colleges and teacher unions.
As the teachers’ unions prepared for their annual conferences, the job prospects facing new entrants to the profession were described last night as “even bleaker than in the 1980s”.
The Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) says just 800 newly qualified primary teachers will find jobs, leaving 1,200 unemployed.
At post-primary level, the Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland (ASTI) says more than 80 per cent of the class of 2009 will be unable to find teaching work, with some 800 facing unemployment.
The poor job prospects for teachers will dominate today’s session of the INTO conference in Letterkenny, Co Donegal.
Minister for Education Batt O’Keeffe, who will address the conference this morning, is expected to receive a cool reception from delegates, furious over cutbacks.
INTO president Declan Kelleher last night called for a change in the direction of government, advocating a left-wing administration where “fly-by-night property tycoons” were no longer allowed to set the agenda.
INTO general secretary John Carr said he would be seeking an early meeting with Mr O’Keeffe to address the jobs crisis facing graduates.
Mr Carr said the pending unemployment crisis for teaching graduates was potentially worse than the 1980s. “Thirty years ago Irish teachers could find employment anywhere in the world but at home. Today, emigration is the only available option for hundreds of teaching graduates but their employment prospects abroad are worse.”
In a bid to avert the crisis, the heads of the various teacher training colleges will also meet Department of Education officials this month.
Tom Collins, head of education at NUI Maynooth said the current situation was unprecedented for those in teacher training: “We’ve never seen anything like it. Thousands of students will be facing a reduced service in the classroom while hundreds of fully qualified teachers may be joining the dole queues.”
At primary level, the jobs situation is particularly serious for the 1,300 students due to graduate as primary teachers in June from the main teacher training colleges including St Patrick’s Drumcondra, Dublin, and Mary Immaculate College, Limerick.
Most of the 600 students who will graduate from Hibernia College, the online teacher training facility, also have little prospect of securing employment. Students at Hibernia pay €8,250 for the 18-month course.
The ASTI predicts there will be about 150-200 jobs available for the 1,100 holders of the post-graduate diploma in education due to graduate this summer. Most of the teaching jobs available are likely to part-time or temporary, it said. But the opportunities for this work have lessened because of the increases in class size and the cuts in teacher substitution cover in the Budget.
While the INTO predicts an increase in the number of teachers retiring, the increase will do little to help new teachers. An increase in the pupil-teacher ratio, as well as special education and language teacher cuts, means that primary schools across the country will be losing experienced teachers in September.