“I’VE BEEN IN the job for three years and it’s been an absolute nightmare for three years.”

Declan O’Leary, the principal of a small gaelcholáiste on the east coast of the country, is struggling to recruit and retain teachers. Last year, he and the deputy principal of his school had to cover about 450 classes between them throughout the year.

This year, he has advertised three positions with seven rounds of advertising, but has not received a single applicant for any of the roles. 

“It’s a perfect storm for us in that you have the renting crisis, the housing crisis, and then on top of that, trying to get teachers for the various subjects that you teach through Irish is an impossibility,” he told The Journal.

“What you’re left with then is you have to employ people who haven’t got the language, if you can get them at all.”

O’Leary has had to employ teachers who can’t speak Irish in order to fill the vacant positions. 

“You’re practically begging people to apply but it’s no good. That has a knock-on effect of having to drop subjects you previously offered to students. We’ve been doing that for the last few weeks because you get the message after a while that these positions aren’t going to be filled.”

O’Leary is one of several principals and deputy principals who spoke to The Journal at the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals (NAPD) annual conference in Galway about a crisis in recruitment in the education sector due to the housing crisis, the lack of full-time employment and more attractive working conditions abroad. 

According to a survey carried out earlier this year by the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI), 75% of school leaders reported that they had received no applications for an advertised teaching post in the 2022/23 school year, while 81% said they had to employ at least one unqualified teacher during the year.

Opportunities abroad are currently proving to be more attractive for younger teachers, O’Leary said. 

‘You can’t compete with that’

“One of the people that left us went to Abu Dhabi. Tax free wages. Free accommodation. He was still prevaricating about going, and they threw a car in as well. You can’t compete with that nor should you be able to, but if you’re a young person, that’s a no-brainer for you.”

Dave Anderson, who has been the principal of Adamstown Community College in Lucan for four years, told The Journal that there are currently several teachers from his school on career breaks in Abu Dhabi. 

“It makes a lot of financial sense for them. It’s not something that they’re willing to do for their whole life, but for four or five years, it makes a massive difference and they come back to Ireland, and it has made a massive financial difference.”

He said the issue of teacher shortages is the biggest stress for his school.

“We’re not actually affected because we’ve worked really hard at recruitment, but it is really hard.

When I started actually doing interviews, we used to have to sort through 200 CVS for an English job. Now you’re lucky if you get one or two.

While all of the full-time positions at his school are filled, the school is currently advertising for a temporary position to cover for maternity leave, which he doesn’t anticipate to fill. 

“You’re only offering a few months contract and we just have nobody applying. That leaves you in an awful difficulty trying to cover the classes,” he said.

“The teacher is going mid-year and you’re scrambling then to try and fill the space with whatever resource you have. You’re taking resources from other places, but you have no choice.”

He said it’s often difficult to get subject-specific teacher to fill the hours that are needed. These are frequently more practical subjects such as woodwork and metalwork, as well as languages. 

“Home economics in Dublin is almost impossible to get because they’re all trained in the west of the country, as are the practical subjects… and they don’t want to come to Dublin. Why would you go to Dublin and pay a huge amount in rent?”

Christine Kilcoyne, the deputy principal of Moyle Park College in South Dublin, told The Journal that her school has “struggled a lot this year” to fill teaching positions. 

“This year was very different in that a lot of our younger teachers have left because since Covid, the opportunity to travel has come back. Hopefully just for a year or two, but we have lost teachers due to that,” she said.

“Dublin seems to be an area people are avoiding because of the high living costs and rent. This year, we don’t have our full staff quota filled so our principal is back in the classroom teaching this year. I myself have been back teaching to cover as well so you know, it is massive.”

While she said she doesn’t know what the solution to the shortage is, she spoke about the importance of reflecting on the positive aspects of the job. 

“Teaching is a fantastic career for work-life balance and particularly as you get older and have a family. It’s very rewarding and no day is the same. I think we need to talk up the profession a bit more rather than knock it down.”

‘There’s no accommodation’

One woman, who has been the deputy principal of a school in north county Dublin with over 1,000 students for ten years, also told The Journal of the “challenge” to get teachers to remain in the capital.

“There’s no accommodation, the accommodation they can get is twice the price of going anywhere else, then come August, especially if they’re not from Dublin to begin with, they’re going home,” she said.

Her school lost two staff members the week before the return to school last month, which led to them having to create a new timetable for classes.

“One girl was able to rent for half the price that she was renting in Dublin in Cork, and another girl bought a house. She couldn’t possibly buy a house in Dublin, so she bought a house and got a job then locally where she was. We can’t compete with that.”

Schools are using student teachers who are currently undertaking the two-year postgraduate masters of education (PME). But according to this deputy principal, there are far fewer in the system now than in previous years. 

“I’m getting I’d say about a quarter of the number of applications for PMEs that we used to get and I’m in a big school, so you can’t even fill those positions.”

On the west coast of the country, schools are not experiencing teacher shortages on the same level because the cost of living is lower than in Dublin and other counties in the east. 

One principal of a school in Galway told The Journal that they “don’t see” teacher shortages because “it’s kind of the place to be”.

However, she said that one of the difficulties for young teachers currently is job security. 

“When you can’t offer that, it’s very difficult to recruit good people because what’s in it for them? They’re out of college, they may have debt, they might want to buy a house, they may want to start a family, they have all these costs, and there’s no certainty in the job when they go into it and that can be very difficult,” she said. 

A survey of teachers carried out by the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) earlier this year found that of those recently appointed, less than a third of teachers (31%) appointed received a full-time contract, and just over one in ten teachers (13%) were offered permanent positions.

Shane Foley, President of the NAPD, told The Journal that the issue of teacher shortages is the top concern among principals and deputies. 

While a lot of schools would have survived and relied on some retired teachers, et cetera to prop up the system, right now, I think we’re in crisis for our schools because there just aren’t teachers out there.

“Having said that, a lot of the PME students are supporting schools. Their contribution is very much welcomed by us as school leaders, because we need them to help the system, but there aren’t enough teachers in specialist areas either, which is a real cause of concern,” he said.

“We need more specialist teachers in the area of guidance and special education teachers.”

Minister for Education Norma Foley will be attending the conference tomorrow. Shane Foley said the NAPD will be calling for measures to be put in place to alleviate the teacher shortage. 

One such measure, he said, would be to shorten the PME to one year. “We have consistently said about the two year PME that that can be reduced. There are ways to look at that that could allow teachers to teach in schools full-time,” he said. 

He is also calling for the process of registering to teach with the Teaching Council to be made quicker, something he says can “take weeks and months to do”. 

“That’s where the problem lies because if there are teachers willing to come right now to the country to work, they’re excluded from doing so until they register with the Teaching Council.

“If we make the process of validating the credentials of teachers from abroad coming to Ireland to work easier and quicker to happen, then maybe we could target a lot more teachers to come and work in Ireland.”