Sir, – Seán Flynn’s article on teachers’ pay (Home News, September 14th) could certainly have been improved with the aid of a maths teacher. The 2008 salaries quoted are at least 13 per cent lower now. He states that “salaries absorb 71 per cent of spend”. If he had taken the time to work out the percentage of spend based on current pay rates, the percentage would be below the OECD average of 63 per cent. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – It is tiresome to hear yet another public figure – this time a TD – raise the issue of qualifications of maths teachers (Home News, September 15th). There is an implication that these teachers are somehow not properly qualified and are reducing the interest in maths among our secondary students.
The problem is not one of lack of qualifications but rather that the Teaching Council has a very narrow view of what constitutes a qualification in maths. In UCD, we estimate that 34 per cent of our four-year programme could be designated as maths or applied maths but the Teaching Council does not generally accept engineering graduates as teachers of maths. I have helped my daughters with their Leaving Certificate Honours course and there is nothing in the maths syllabus that would challenge an engineer. Furthermore, it is a delight to see their eyes light up when you tell them of the many practical applications of what they are learning.
While I fear that we may have a shortage of civil engineering graduates in five years and we do not wish to lose them to teaching, this purist attitude does seem rather short-sighted. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – I simply cannot believe the response from the Teachers’ Union of Ireland to the recent OECD report on pay. How could anyone seriously believe that public sector pay in 2008 is now only of “archaeological” relevance? While a lot has changed in the past three years, those changes have come about as a belated and necessary response to the excesses of the boom years, which reached their peak in 2008.
If I have any sympathy for teachers, it is that they are being singled out, when the reality is that virtually all public servants in Ireland are grossly overpaid by international standards. Leaving aside self-interest, can anyone offer a plausible reason why a small, virtually bankrupt country should be providing such world-leading salaries out of the public purse? – Yours, etc,