A chara, – As one of the many graduates who will emigrate due to the lack of available employment for newly qualified teachers, I feel a great sense of disbelief at the complacency of the Government in its willingness to ignore that numerous highly-trained individuals are leaving, only to use their skills for the benefit of the education systems of other countries.
The Teaching Council requires that all newly-qualified teachers complete an induction period of 300 hours post-qualification, in order to be recognised as fully accredited teachers by the council. However, by staying in Ireland, the vast majority of teaching graduates of 2011 will find it incredibly challenging to fulfil this requirement within the allowed three years, due to the impossibility of securing long-term employment. Therefore, the only option for most is to fulfil this requirement abroad.
Many school managers find themselves in a position whereby they cannot replace teachers who have retired or have left the profession.
This results in larger class sizes, disadvantaging the individual learner. Equally, cutbacks in the provision of classroom assistants and special needs assistants have been well documented by the media.
The majority of the graduates of 2011 neither wish to be forced to emigrate, nor join the dole queue, while their skills go to waste. Perhaps it would be more prudent to create a programme whereby graduates could claim social welfare benefits, while working towards the 300 hours induction required by the Teaching Council, by working as a classroom assistant. This would have benefits for schools, individual students in terms of enhancing their educational opportunities, and for graduates in terms of gaining valuable experience.
Irish teaching graduates are highly sought after, and the graduates of 2011 find themselves securing full-time, permanent positions in countries as diverse as the United Kingdom, Canada and Singapore. Many will never return. These countries now freely benefit from graduates with degrees paid for by the Irish government. Allowing this to continue is utterly illogical. – Is mise,