Sir, – I began my career as a primary school teacher in 2002, and quickly learned that any mention to my friends of the challenges of teaching was swiftly followed by the soft strains of the world’s smallest violin, playing a lament for me and my long holidays. When the depths of the current recession became apparent, the animosity in the media towards public servants in general, and often towards teachers in particular, made me reluctant to tell people what I did for a living, having become acutely aware of the offensiveness of my job security (I finally secured a “permanent job” in 2010), my salary (benchmarking, etc) and, of course, my holidays.
Unwritten rules notwithstanding, I would like to respond to the claim made in your Editorial (August 31st) that “80 per cent of the €9 billion education budget is absorbed by pay and pensions”. The source of this statistic is not given, but it may have been the OECD’s Education At A Glance indicators. There are two problems with this. First, the OECD expresses compensation of staff as a percentage of current expenditure only, not of the total budget, and second, the figures date from before the application of the public sector pay cut which, together with the public sector pension levy, more than cancelled out benchmarking.
A more accurate picture of current Government spending is found in the 2011 estimates, (see http://per.gov.ie/wp-content/
uploads/2011-REV.pdf), which shows that pay and pensions for everyone attached to the Department of Education is €5.9 billion. This figure includes the Minister, all staff working within the department, teachers, lecturers, SNAs, caretakers, secretaries, etc. Given a total budget of €8.9 billion, the percentage absorbed by pay and pensions is 66 per cent.
The Irish Times is right to question the chronic underfunding of our education system, because money spent on education really is an investment in all our futures. Our teachers are the most valuable educational resource we have, and they are of a high quality: according to the CAO, those currently entering teacher training are drawn from the top 15 per cent of Leaving Cert students. They already face an additional 10 per cent pay cut when they start teaching, and a greatly devalued pension when they retire.
In the debate about value for money in education, we must be wary of devaluing the teaching profession, of devaluing our investment in education, of devaluing our future. In that spirit, I would like to point out that Irish primary school teachers deliver 20 per cent more teaching hours per year than the EU19 average, in classes with 20 per cent more pupils.
I know, I know, time to break out that violin. – Yours, etc,