Teachers protest to highlight pay inequality

Teachers have warned of more protests as they ramped up their campaign for equal pay yesterday.

The Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) said the pay inequality issue — which has seen teachers and lecturers who started work in 2011 being paid less than their colleagues for the same work — has triggered a collapse in applications to post-primary teacher training courses and devastated morale in staffrooms across the country.

“There has been a 62% collapse in applications for post-primary teacher training courses since 2011, while a TUI survey in 2017 showed that 29% of new or recent entrants to the profession did not see themselves in the job in 10 years,” the union said last night.