21 October 2024
By Tom Collins
tom@TheCork.ie

Housing, living costs, and working conditions – are making teaching less attractive as a career

The Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO), in partnership with the Irish Primary Principals’ Network (IPPN) and the Catholic Primary Schools Management Association (CPSMA), has today released the results of an extensive survey, which underscores the deepening teacher supply crisis in primary and special schools in Ireland. 40% of all primary and special schools responded to the survey.

The findings reveal that for the second consecutive year, schools are struggling to fill permanent, fixed-term and long-term substitute teaching posts, leading to an overall current staffing shortage of 951 teachers. This is having a profound impact on the quality of education in many schools. Worryingly, schools expect to have a further 1,816 vacancies by next January indicating an overall shortage of 2,767 teachers for the majority of this school year.

Survey Highlights Recruitment and Retention Challenges

The survey, conducted from 30 September to 7 October 2024, paints a stark picture of the current situation in schools:

Unfilled Teaching Posts: A worrying 29% of respondents indicated they were unable to fill all teaching positions allocated for the 2024/2025 school year, a slight increase from 28% last year. 195 permanent posts and 756 long term temporary or substitute posts are unfilled in these schools. The crisis is particularly acute in Dublin, Wicklow, and Kildare, where more than 50% of schools reported unfilled teaching posts.

Geographic Disparities: Dublin continues to bear the brunt of the crisis, with 134 permanent posts vacant early this year. The situation is less severe in counties such as Kerry, Cork, and Limerick, where vacancy rates remain under 6%, however teachers are needed across the country and housing continues to impact recruitment and retention in many areas. Special schools were identified as having the highest proportion of vacancies, with 52% of respondents reporting unfilled posts.

Increase in Long-Term Vacancies: The number of fixed-term posts that remain vacant was 306 this month. Compared with last Autumn, significant increases in the number of vacant fixed-term posts were noted in counties Meath and Wicklow.

Unqualified Personnel Working in Substitute Capacity: Schools have increasingly had to rely on personnel not registered with the Teaching Council to cover short term teacher absences. So far this year, 745 such individuals were employed, with 284 of these in Dublin alone. This widespread reliance on staff who are not qualified to teach in primary and special schools highlights the severity of the teacher supply crisis. In addition, 1,103 registered teachers who are not qualified for the sector were working in primary and special schools.

Projected Vacancies and Anticipated Shortages

Looking ahead, the survey reveals alarming predictions for the coming months:

Expected Vacancies in Permanent Positions: The number of anticipated permanent vacancies due to retirements or resignations by January 2025 is 399. Every county, except Clare, has seen an increase in these expected vacancies in comparison with this time last year.

Anticipated fixed-term vacancies

Schools expect to have 400 more fixed-term vacancies between now and 6 January with nearly one third of these gaps expected to arise in Dublin, but a sizeable number also expected in Cork.

Long-Term Substitute Posts: A total of 1,000 long-term substitute posts are expected to become vacant over the next three months with most of these in Dublin and its commuter belt areas.

Impact on Special Education and Student Outcomes

In the 2024 survey, 59% of schools reallocated Special Education Teachers (SETs) to mainstream classes, down from 66% last year. There has been a notable rise in these reallocations in Dublin, while other counties remained stagnant or declined. Despite more schools reallocating SETs, the number of days SET teachers were deployed to mainstream classes has decreased, with most falling within the 0–5-day range. DEIS (Band 1) schools and Gaelscoileanna also reported increases in the use of SET teachers to cover for vacant mainstream class teaching posts.

Splitting Classes: 505 or 39% of schools reported that they had been forced to sub-divide classes into other classrooms when a substitute teacher could not be found during the first five weeks of the school year. This occurred most frequently in Gaelscoileanna and in larger schools.

Heightened Stress Levels in School Leaders

Principal teachers have reported heightened stress levels when dealing with recruitment and retention issues:

Stress associated with Recruitment: Nearly half (48%) of school leaders reported that their experience in recruiting staff this year was as stressful as last year, with 33% describing it as extremely stressful.

Increased Administrative Burden: 19% of principals said they had to make more than 10 attempts—through calls, emails, or substitute portals—to secure a substitute teacher on an urgent basis.

View on Department Response: 86% of respondents expressed dissatisfaction with the Department’s response to the teacher supply crisis, deeming it inadequate. Only 16 out of 1,304 participants rated the Department’s response as good, highlighting widespread concerns about its effectiveness.

Reacting to the survey, INTO General Secretary John Boyle said:

“The findings of this survey paint a deeply concerning picture of an enormous crisis in our primary and special schools. The shortage of teachers, especially in urban areas, continues to grow, and the heavy reliance on unqualified staff is an alarming development. Unless immediate action is taken, particularly to address the housing and living cost pressures in Dublin and other urban centres, this crisis will only worsen. We must act now to ensure no child is regularly being left without a qualified teacher throughout their primary schooling.

School leaders are under extreme pressure, and the chronic shortage of teachers is severely impacting their ability to manage their schools effectively on a daily basis. They often have no option when mainstream classes are without teachers but to redeploy Special Education Teachers, thereby compromising the specific supports for children with additional needs. This appalling situation looks set to continue until government ensures that Ireland has an adequate supply of teachers.

The scale of the problem now requires a whole-of-government response.

This week the INTO will meet with UNESCO who are coordinating a new research project focused on strategic planning for teachers in Ireland. We will be demanding once more that a national teacher supply commission should be established, tasked with finding real solutions to the teacher supply crisis, focusing on financial incentives, job stability and career progression.

Government must take immediate action to increase the number of places on initial teacher education courses by at least 300 places per annum, until the crisis is resolved.

Again, we call for the launch an international PR campaign targeting eligible teachers under routes 1 and 4 to return to work in Ireland and the review the incremental credit scheme to incentivise the return of overseas teachers.

Housing, living costs, and working conditions must all be addressed if we are to retain our teaching workforce and ensure viable future delivery of primary and special education in Ireland.”