Sir, – I welcome the continued focus of your newspaper on the teacher supply crisis. “Teachers’ lives: crisis in the classroom” (Weekend, October 7th) captured the reality of the current situation.
The problem of an inadequate supply of suitably qualified teachers has been growing for more than 10 years now. As a result, schools are dropping subjects from the curriculum, students are being taught by those who do not have the necessary qualifications and large numbers of teachers are being diverted from special education provision.
The problem has been compounded in the initial stages by a slow response to the issue from the authorities. In the last five years, the Department of Education has come up with a number of initiatives, useful in themselves, but not nearly fundamental enough to have a serious impact on the problem.
Your description of many of these as “sticking plaster solutions” was strikingly appropriate (Editorial, April 12th). That piece was headed “Much more can be done”.
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Sadly this did not prompt any significant response from the authorities.
Ending the differential salary scales, restoring the cutbacks applied to promotional posts in recent years and authorising sufficient numbers to cater for the increased workload being imposed on schools by the Department of Education itself, reducing the cost of the professional master of education degree, tackling seriously the problem of casualisation in the profession, with teachers being offered contracts which are insufficient to provide them with a meaningful income and, most fundamentally, treating the profession with respect, are just some steps that come to mind.
You concluded your editorial as follows: “At the very least, young people deserve to be taught by qualified staff who have the skills to help them reach their full potential. The most vulnerable, especially, should never lose out.”
In a modern, reasonably wealthy country, it doesn’t seem a lot to ask. – Yours, etc,
BRIAN FLEMING,
Palmerstown,
Dublin 20.
