Irish schools are struggling to fill teaching positions with hundreds of vacant posts and under-qualified teachers filling roles.
An unpublished draft study by the Department of Education was obtained by the Irish Times in a Freedom Of Information request which showed that during the last academic year, there were more than 400 teaching posts at second level unfilled.
A further 800 teaching posts were filled by teachers who were not qualified to be teaching the subjects they were delivering.
On Newstalk Breakfast, the National Association of Principals and Deputies Director Paul Crone said this information is “not surprising”.
“I think it's important to say that two years ago, this was a national problem that was affecting every area of the country, whereas at the moment, it's more confined to specific areas within the country, and now to specific subjects,” he said.
“So there has been an improvement, but it's still, it's still not good enough.”
Maths and Irish are cited as the subject areas where schools are struggling to hire teachers.
"Brain drain"
Mr Crone said that Dublin is the biggest area for this issue, with other rural areas also coming in to play.
“One of the biggest issues we're having in schools is the brain drain from Dublin,” he said.
“Young teachers, I think, are happy to come to Dublin when they can pull together the life of Dublin and as they become more experienced they're choosing to move down the country where their dollar goes further.”
"Potential for a shift"
Mr Crone said that something needs to change or be brought to the table by the new Government.
“We have a new Government coming in now, so there's a potential for a shift,” he said.
“We need to look at helping and supporting these teachers and potentially other essential workers to get on the property market in Dublin, because we need to keep our best teachers in the area that they're working in,” he said.
Mr Crone warned that a lot of teachers who are being called ‘un-qualified’ for the roles they are filling are actually qualified in the subjects but aren’t on the teaching register for them.
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