Teacher supply crisis will 'irrevocably damage the education system', study finds

'While shortages of teachers in particular subject areas have arisen from time to time, for 10 years or so now school principals in Ireland have been highlighting the fact that the problem has both widened and deepened,' researchers said.

The "piecemeal" approach to solving the teacher supply crisis over the last decade will "irrevocably damage the education system and the profession of teaching", researchers have warned.

As the teacher supply crisis continued to come to a head this year, many schools struggled to fill posts.

From September, schools will start sharing teachers in high-demand subjects as part of an initial pilot scheme the Department of Education is intending on expanding in response to the crisis.

While the issue of a steady supply of teachers has been a feature of the Irish educational landscape for decades, the problem has become more pronounced in recent years, according to new research by Professor Judith Harford and Brian Fleming.

In a study tracking the evolution of the crisis, the researchers argue there has been a reluctance at policy level when it comes to meaningful action “which risks irrevocably damaging the profession and ultimately the education system”. 

The reason for the “slow and ineffective” response by the authorities to the growing teacher shortage problem will never be made fully clear, they added.

The issue of teacher supply is not unique to Ireland, they argue in the paper published by Irish Educational Studies.

Pay and conditions

Among the common factors across different jurisdictions are pay and conditions, the cost of housing, pay levels, and working conditions relative to other graduate professions, particularly in subjects like science and maths.

In recent years, more complex and nebulous issues such as workload, stress and wellbeing, societal attitudes towards teachers and negative coverage of the profession in the media have also impacted.” 

They added: “While shortages of teachers in particular subject areas have arisen from time to time, for 10 years or so now school principals in Ireland have been highlighting the fact that the problem has both widened and deepened.” 

In 2014, the first meeting of the Technical Working Group on teacher supply met for the first time.

However, a final report entitled Striking the Balance was “inexplicably” not published until 2017, despite being made available to the Teaching Council at the end of 2015.

In March 2018, the first meeting of the Teacher Supply Steering Group (TSSG), made up of senior officials from the Department of Education, the Teaching Council, the Higher Education Authority, and the higher education institutions, took place.

“It is noticeable, however, that organisations whose members were dealing with the teacher supply issue on a day-to-day basis such as the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals, the Irish Primary Principals Network and the three teacher unions were not invited to participate.

“The possibility of reviewing the cost of the PME [Professional Masters of Education] agreed at the very first meeting of the TSSG in March 2018 has, it seems, not yet been addressed,” the study notes.

It would appear that to date the casualisation issue has also not been effectively assessed.” 

Recommendations put forward in the study include making exchequer funding available to higher education institutions to grant a waiver of fees for PME students in their second year of study.

They also suggest radical action would almost certainly be necessary to further reduce the ‘leakage’ of qualified teachers choosing other careers, encourage those working in the system to remain and others already abroad to return.

“The Department of Education should make a partial refund of fees to H Dip/PME students who graduated since 2011 on completion of a specified amount of teaching service to the system within a stated duration.”