Employment law putting schools at risk of teacher shortages

SCHOOLS could be left short of teachers in essential subjects because of an employment law guaranteeing permanency, after four years for contracted staff.

School managers are seeking talks with the Department of Education to review the 2003 Protection of Employees (Fixed Term Work) Act, for which procedures have been in place, in schools, since 2006.

The rules mean that a teacher is entitled to a contract of indefinite duration (CID), equivalent to permanent employment, if they have worked for four years, or more, at the same school under two or more contracts. Around 450 second-level teachers were given CIDs this year, bringing the total number with such contracts to almost 2,000.

In situations where a teacher who has been covering absence of a staff member whose subjects only require limited numbers of classes each week, timetabling issues arise if the second teacher is awarded a CID.

The Joint Managerial Body (JMB) – which represents the boards of almost 400 secondary schools – warned Education Minister Mary Coughlan at its recent conference that chaos will hit schools if the law is not reviewed.

“We don’t want to prevent people getting their legal entitlement to a CID, which gives them the same rights as full-time employees. But this is causing headaches for principals who will be trying to draw up timetables over the summer for the next school year,” said JMB general secretary Ferdia Kelly.

The problems arise in cases where somebody is contracted for a few years to cover a career break or other long-term absence for a teacher of a subject such as physical education (PE) or one taken by small numbers of students such as art or economics.

If they have built up entitlement to a CID when the absent teacher returns, the school then has two teachers whose main subject only requires one full-time teacher.

At the same time, the addition of this teacher may mean the school is unable to employ a new staff member when another employee retires.

This could mean the school is unable to replace a full-time teacher of a more common subject, such as English, biology or maths, and has to rely on somebody else on short-term contracts until the next approved vacancy arises.

“A further difficulty is that a teacher with more popular subjects is more likely to get a permanent job in another school, meaning students could have a number of different teachers over three or four years,” Mr Kelly said.

The Department of Education said the deployment of teachers and range of subjects offered are primarily an issue for school management, but it recognises that teacher numbers set parameters on the number of subjects. A spokesperson said it continues to review the Fixed Term Work Act procedures with JMB and others to deal with issues that may arise.

“If schools have difficulties with providing individual subjects, for example through a retirement of a teacher, some short-term support is provided through a curricular concessions process to enable them to meet their curricular demands,” he said.