Principals face ban on hiring substitute teachers

PRIMARY principals will be banned by their union from hiring unqualified people from September in protest at their continued use for substitution instead of unemployed teachers.

The Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) annual congress changed its policy adopted in 2008 that would have seen members refusing to work with non-teachers from 2013. A motion on the issue was amended after it emerged this week that more than 400 unqualified people have been working in primary classrooms for at least 10 weeks of the current school year.

Education Minister Ruairi Quinn told the Irish Examiner earlier this week he believes restructured vocational education committees could eventually be given responsibility for finding substitute teachers for primary schools. But the INTO’s move puts him under pressure to set up a system by the end of the summer under which substitute cover can be better organised at short notice.

Mr Quinn said last night he is open to setting up panels of qualified teachers for substitute cover. But he also hopes by September to enact legislation introduced by his predecessor Mary Coughlan to deal with the question of unqualified teachers.

Under a section of the 2001 Teaching Council Act, which is not yet in force, only registered teachers can be paid from State funds. But amending legislation which reached committee stage in the Dáil before Christmas would allow unqualified teachers to be employed in exceptional circumstances.

The INTO opposes the amendment as it believes it would enshrine the rights of unqualified person to work and be paid as teachers.

Proposing yesterday’s motion, INTO district 14 committee member Pat Crowe read an email from Mr Quinn the day after the Education (Amendment) Bill was published, in which the then Labour Party education spokesperson said the changes were completely ludicrous when there were hundreds of recently qualified teachers looking for work. However, the minister said this week there needs to be flexibility for schools in situations where they have to cover absences at short notice.

INTO delegates in Sligo said the use of unqualified people is not just an affront to hundreds of colleagues starting their careers but to the children whose classes they are put into.

Marie Gahan from Waterford city said nobody but a qualified teacher should be put in front of a classroom.

“If you go to a factory and there’s expensive machinery, there’s no way that anybody but a qualified maintenance technician would be allowed near it because it’s considered too valuable. But by comparison, we will allow unqualified people into our schools and our children are being used as toys,” she said.

Sean Ó Hargáin, principal of Gaelscoil Osraí in Kilkenny city and the only speaker against the motion, said he agreed with the need to give unemployed teachers work but that the motion would make life impossible for principals.

He recently made 15 phone calls to qualified substitutes on a morning when two of his 17 classroom teachers were sick on short notice on the same day two others were on a training course, but he could not fined to take their places.

“There were only two things I could do, one was to divide two classes out among some of my colleagues, who would have had eight to 12 extra children each to teach,” he said.

“The only other option I had was a third year university student who is a past pupil who was available to come in that day. It broke my heart to do it but that’s the reality of the job principals have to do on a daily basis,” said.

Donncha McGinley from the INTO’s Chualann branch in Co Wicklow said teachers are not glorified babysitters and said the use of unqualified people wouldn’t be allowed in any other profession.

“Imagine walking into an architect’s office and saying ‘I’d like to have a house designed’ and being told, ‘certainly sir, Tommy here did mechanical drawing for the Junior Cert, he’ll do it for you,’” he said.