One-in-8 trainee teachers to change jobs or emigrate

EMIGRATION or a different career are the only options for one-in-eight trainee teachers who have not yet even qualified, a survey has found.

While all new public servants appointed this year will be subject to salaries 10% below the scales for their colleagues, teachers face an extra hit of up to 6%. The greater difficulty getting work because of Government cutbacks and a new scheme to redeploy teachers in overstaffed schools are adding to the problems facing the 660 people surveyed by the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI).

They will complete their training courses in the coming weeks but, while most new second-level teachers previously started on the third point of the 25-year salary scale to reflect their postgraduate qualification, those beginning their careers this year will start on the first point.

It means a teacher beginning work in the autumn will start on the equivalent of €27,800 a year, compared to a new entrant last year with a starting salary of a little more than €33,000. Over the first decade of their careers, the changes would amount to a difference of more than €110,000 in their earnings.

While finding permanent work has always been difficult for second-level teachers in the first years after qualifying, the survey finds that just over half of this year’s prospective graduates expect to have a permanent teaching job in five years.

But one-in-eight do not plan to seek a teaching job in Ireland, with most of them considering work in another field or emigrating, and just under half thinking of returning to college.

“After spending four or five years studying and training, they enter schools anxious to make a positive contribution to the lives of the students in their care. It is a travesty that instead of making that vital contribution, so many will be forced to emigrate or change profession,” said ASTI general secretary Pat King.

An actuarial study for teacher unions recently showed the arrangements introduced for new public servants from this year will result in a pension amounting to 26% of a teachers’ final salary after 43 years’ service, compared to 32% of final salary after working for 40 years for those employed before the changes.

Teacher employment prospects feature strongly in the agenda for the ASTI annual convention in Cork next week.