Union chief warns of failure to improve teachers’ pay

THE quality of school education in the future could be put in major jeopardy if teachers’ pay packages are not properly improved, a union leader warned at the weekend.

John White, general secretary of the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) said he was responding to recent sustained criticisms of public service workers which suggested they were overpaid and removed from economic reality.

He said this must be seen as a calculated attempt to devalue the work of teachers and others ahead of the Public Service Benchmarking Body beginning its work early next year.

School teachers have benefited from salary increases of 13% from the first benchmarking exercise completed in 2002. Along with national pay agreement increases, the salary of a teacher with 10 years of service has risen almost €9,000 to €40,464 in that time.

“If our salaries fall out of line with those available in the private sector or if the esteem in which our work is held is systematically devalued, it will only be a short time before the recruitment and retention of persons of high quality into the teaching profession will become as problematic in Ireland as in some other countries,” Mr White said.

“Ireland’s economy is healthy with growth for 2005, as forecast by the ESRI, of 5.7% and of 5% in 2006. We can well afford to pay reasonable salaries to our teachers whose responsibility is to prepare the next generation of our young people,” he told the union’s education conference on Saturday.

Mr White said teachers would continue to prepare students to the best of their ability in a changing society with changing schools.

But, he said, high standards in literacy by international comparison have been maintained despite being ranked 21st out of 27 developed countries in education spending for each second level student.

“This is simply not good enough and I call on the Government to take the first steps to addressing this problem in the forthcoming budget,” Mr White said.

He called for a coherent and planned strategy to increase the proportion of national income spent on second-level education. The ASTI leader highlighted the need to fund laboratory assistants to help science teachers meet the demands of the syllabus and implementation of proposed syllabi in technology subjects and art.

Mr White also told delegates that more equipment and resources, smaller class sizes and comprehensive career development are required to enable teachers provide more personalised learning for all pupils.

“Teachers who were trained for the society of 30 years ago have been left to grapple with all of the changes in our society with almost no training,” he said.