Extension of overtime allowance considered to address teacher shortage

Teachers who opted to work extra hours due to Covid-related absences last year may be able to continue to give extra tuition as one of several initiatives due to be announced shortly. Picture: Danny Lawson/PA Wire

A taskforce is to examine how to address teacher shortages, including extending the overtime allowance for staff in post-primary schools.

Teachers who opted to work extra hours due to Covid-related absences last year may be able to continue to give extra tuition as one of several initiatives due to be announced shortly, according to Education Minister Norma Foley.

Speaking at the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals (NAPD) annual conference, Ms Foley said the relaxation of rules relating to career breaks and measures to encourage retired teachers to return to work were also being examined.

“Some of these mechanisms are less complicated to introduce than others,” Ms Foley added. She said she hoped to be able to make an announcement shortly. 

The minister said she was conscious of the handling of Junior Cert reform, and wanted to do it “differently and better” for the Leaving Cert. She also said she believed it was “wrong” that a student who had taken Leaving Cert Applied could not opt to take a subject in the established Leaving Cert programme, such as mathematics.

Outgoing NAPD president Rachel O’Connor said the housing and rental crisis is contributing to the teacher shortage, as it is forcing teachers out of urban areas.

Ms O’Connor also queried why trainee teachers have to spend two years on a post-graduate qualification, at a cost of up to €12,000, when the former higher diploma took one year for those who had completed a four-year degree.

Administrative burden

She appealed to Ms Foley to ease the administrative burden on school principals and deputy principals amid an ongoing struggle to recruit staff. Principals are spending about 30 hours a week on administration and various roles needed to be rolled into one administrative support officer. 

Meanwhile, a teachers’ union protested outside a school on Friday in a dispute over attendance at meetings of the Teaching Council, the professional standards body for the profession.

The Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland claims Presentation College Athenry is refusing to allow one of its teachers, an elected representative of the Teaching Council, to attend Teaching Council meetings. 

A spokeswoman for the school said regular absences from class teaching, which have been sanctioned in previous years, were disruptive for students. The school has been advised that the industrial action is "unlawful", she added.