Irish Examiner View: We need to learn lessons

Teacher shortfall

The cost of accommodation was cited as one of the reasons affecting recruitment of teachers. Picture: Larry Cummins

Yesterday this newspaper reported on the difficulties schools face in recruiting teachers  — in a Teachers Union of Ireland survey it was revealed that 71% of schools had advertised positions in the past six months for which no teacher applied, a scarcely believable statistic.

Teaching has been a revered profession in Ireland for centuries and beyond, with countless Irish emigrants benefiting from a good education to succeed when they left these shores.

If we cannot provide enough teachers to staff our schools, then that’s disturbing news on several fronts. For instance, an educated workforce is often trumpeted as one of the reasons Ireland benefits from so much foreign direct investment from overseas firms, but the advantages of a good education system go far beyond such utilitarian reasons.

A well-educated population is the best defence against the kind of dangerous populism which feeds on and exploits ignorance, with unfortunate precedents visible in both the US and the UK.

The obvious response to findings such as this is to seek a remedy, and perhaps more could be done to encourage people in mid-career in other areas of the economy to consider retraining as teachers, bringing life experience and different skills to bear as well in the classroom.

The reasons for this shortage of teachers should also be explored with a view to finding a solution. In that regard it was dismaying to see the report cite the cost of accommodation as one of the factors affecting the recruitment and retention of teaching staff.

An Ireland where it’s too costly for teachers to live near the schools they teach in has fundamental problems — a lesson we’re all learning.