Teachers still more likely to emigrate for work

Teachers are the only group of graduates who were more likely to emigrate as the economy began to improve, new figures show.

Although they have the highest rates of employment, the proportion of recently qualified teachers who left the country a year after graduation more than doubled to 11% in just four years.

The official statistics are an indication of the problems facing schools and the Government of finding enough teachers to fill short-term gaps or to teach subjects at second-level in which there are shortfalls.

The figures, in a publication by the Central Statistics Office and Higher Education Authority, relate to the Class of 2010 and those who graduated in 2014, and what they were doing in 2011 and 2015, respectively.

For the holders of degrees in all nine other disciplines, the proportion who appear to have left the country within a year of graduation has fallen or stayed unchanged.

Among similar-sized cohorts of graduates under the heading of ‘social sciences, journalism, and information’, for example, the proportion who were not in Ireland fell from 17% to 12%.

The assumption of emigration is based on graduates who were not captured in official data regarding employment, further study or receipt of welfare payments.

This may include overseas students who returned home, but does not include anyone who emigrated that received any benefit payments in the preceding year.

Education Minister Richard Bruton has recently pointed out that the output of new teachers from education degrees had increased to around 2,500 a year.

He said initiatives to be considered by a steering group he is establishing will aim to address particular difficulties for primary schools getting substitutes, and for second-level principals to find teachers of certain subjects.

Among the options it will look at is setting aside guaranteed numbers of places for graduates in disciplines where there are shortages on courses to become second-level teachers.

His plans to restrict the ability of teachers to take career breaks were described by unions and primary principals as out of touch with the real problems facing schools, as there are no difficulties filling vacancies associated with career breaks.

The figures under the ‘education’ category in the CSO/HEA report related to 2,150 teaching graduates in 2010 and 2,480 in 2014.

This means the actual numbers who emigrated with those degrees nearly trebled, from just over 100 a year to 273, and the net annual increase in new teachers in the country was just 165.

Teacher unions have said that the lure of teaching jobs overseas, particularly in the Middle East, is compounding difficulties created by the creation of a three-tier pay system here.

Since 2011, those who entered the profession for the first time are on lower scales than their longer-serving colleagues.

Mr Bruton pointed last week to the broader findings on the income of working graduates as evidence of the values of a teaching qualification.

The average earnings of those with a teaching degree five years after graduation were second only to ICT graduates, but the weekly earnings of teachers a year after graduating slumped from €705 to €560.

Recent teaching graduates were also the only ones who were less likely in 2015 than in 2011 to be in ‘substantial employment’, defined as having at least 12 weeks’ work in the year and average weekly earnings over €100.