Incoming INTO president: Teacher supply issue ‘needs long-term solutions’

The next president of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO), Cork teacher Anne Horan, has said the country’s primary and special education school system is in jeopardy due to unqualified people replacing teachers in classrooms and the shortage of teachers to fill full-time and long-term substitute vacancies.

Ms Horan, who hails from Ballineen and will become INTO president during the union’s annual conference next month, was speaking to The Echo after the revelation on TG4’s current affairs programme, 7Lá, that 98% of Irish schools had employed unqualified individuals in the 2023/24 school year.

This amounted to 8,883 unqualified individuals being hired to stand in for teachers who were off due to illness or other reasons during the school year.

The disclosure, which followed a Freedom of Information request to the Department of Education, reflects the findings of a survey carried out in the first five weeks of this school year — the four weeks in September and the first week of October — in which it was found there was a staffing shortage then of 951 teachers.

Ms Horan said this was projected to get a great deal worse by this point of the school year.

In the September survey, which generated a response rate of 40% from schools across Ireland and was conducted tly by the INTO, the Irish Primary Principals Network, and the Catholic Primary School Managers Association, it was found 107 schools in Cork, out of 138 schools responding in the county, reported it took up to five calls to get a substitute, with 14 citing it takes up to 19 calls. Four school principals suggested it took up to 39 calls or emails to secure a substitute.

Asked how recruiting and retaining teachers compares to last year, 62% of Cork principals felt it was as bad as last year (the same), while 8% of respondents in Cork found it more stressful this year, compared to last.

In of unqualified people standing in for teachers in schools, the incoming president of the INTO said the scarcity of qualified substitute teachers posed challenges for principals as in some cases they had to redeploy special education teachers to other classes or, in other instances, they had to divide the children between the remaining teachers.

“In our survey, 83 schools in Cork reported they had to redeploy their special education teachers,” she said.

“It sounds very good because the children went home and they had a teacher in front of them, but what about all of the children with special education needs who needed their teachers, the people that needed the extra bit of help every day, they didn’t have teachers even though the classes did.

“In that survey, we also found that there were 1,103 posts filled nationally by people that weren’t ed as teachers with the Teaching Council and in the month of September last, 77 of those posts were in Cork.

“That’s a lot of children that didn’t have a qualified person standing in front of them that day.”

She said that more teachers need to be trained and the profession needs to be made more attractive if the situation is to be turned around.

“We need an extra 300 places a year on the initial teacher training courses — we’ve been looking for this — until this crisis has been overcome.

“We need a national teacher supply commission, we need long-term solutions for teacher supply.

“The Government needs to respond very quickly to claims lodged by the union under the local bargaining process within the current pay agreement.” Ms Horan said the issue regarding teachers working in schools abroad should have this counted as experience in of pay calculation when they return home.

She also expressed concern that for 8,883 unqualified people to be hired as stand-ins for teachers, it would mean completely unqualified people, with no teaching experience whatsoever, were being brought into schools. “You can’t come up to 8,883 otherwise,” she said.

“At the end of the day, yes, the teachers have extra work, it’s an extra burden but it’s the children who are suffering and that is it, that’s the problem.”

Department 

In a response from the Department of Education, a spokesperson told The Echo that ensuring every child’s experience in school was positive and that they had qualified, engaged teachers available to them in their learning, was a priority area of action for the Government.

“It is a legal requirement for a teacher to be ed with the Teaching Council to receive a salary paid by the State,” said the department’s spokesperson.

“To , a teacher must have a recognised teaching qualification.

“A person who is not a ed teacher with the Teaching Council may be employed under specific, limited circumstances, for up to five days.”

The spokesperson said this equated to over 8.1m days of instruction during March last year.

“At some point in any given school year, vacancies occur due to qualified teachers taking statutory leave, for example, sick leave,” said the spokesperson.

“These vacancies can be filled by substitute teachers, such as student teachers, teachers ed to teach in primary or post-primary, and others.

“Substitution by those not ed with the Teaching Council s for approximately 0.7% of all days of instruction.”

A breakdown of substitute teachers provided by the department disclosed that 4% were student teachers while 1.19% were post-primary teachers.

“The majority of teaching provided in schools, over 99%, is provided by teachers ed with the Teaching Council.”

The spokesperson also said that several measures had been implemented to tackle teacher shortages, including an increase of 20% in initial teacher education graduates, a 30% uptick in teachers ed with the Teaching Council, and “a significant increase of 5,621 primary teachers”.

“Measures introduced in recent budgets included a Stem bursary, a PME fee refund scheme, and an expansion of upskilling programmes, which are in addition to workforce planning for teachers and SNAs, reflecting the commitment to ongoing investment in the education system to address teacher supply,” said the spokesperson.

“Analysis of CAO applications spanning from 2017 to 2024 indicates a sustained and robust demand with, on average, 6% of first preference applications either for primary or post-primary teaching programmes.

“First preference data from the CAO published recently showed increases in primary first preferences of 9% and in post-primary of 5%.

“Teaching is an attractive career choice evidenced by the 3,700 newly qualified teachers ed with the Teaching Council in 2024, with over 126,000 now on the .”