War of words deepens over loss of teaching posts

THE war of words deepened yesterday between a teachers’ union and the Department of Education over the number of teaching posts to be lost in second-level schools this autumn because of budget cutbacks.

The department rejected as “unnecessarily alarmist” a claim by the Teachers’ Union of Ireland on Thursday that, based on figures published on the department website, 3,600 teaching posts would be lost in the country’s 730 second-level schools.

The department stressed again that this is the number based on the teacher allocation process up to early June but that it still expects there will be 240 fewer teachers at second-level when all allocations are made later this year.