Teacher Sick Leave 20/11/08

INTO Press Release: Statement by John Carr, General Secretary on Teacher Sick Leave

20th November 2008

Statement by John Carr, General Secretary, Irish National Teachers’ Organisation on Teacher Sick Leave

The INTO accused the Minister for Education and Science of misleading the public in relation to the issue of teachers’ sick leave.

Claims that over 12,000 teachers are absent every Monday and Friday are untrue.

The facts are that teachers have on average just over one uncertified sick day per teacher per year. “There is clearly not a problem in relation to teachers’ sick leave,” said John Carr, general secretary of the INTO.

“Teachers in general have top class attendance records and only take time off when absolutely necessary. In fact, many teachers turn up when not fit to be at work.

The Minister knows that his proposals in relation to sick leave will cause chaos and turmoil in schools. This has been confirmed by school management. He is now trying to blame teachers for taking sick days, creating a misleading impression that teachers take an inordinate amount of sick leave, when in fact the opposite is true.

This Minister has got his figures wrong before. He has got them wrong again.

According to the Minister’s figures, there was a total of 59,992 uncertified sick days. This works out at about one per teacher per year.

A total of 12,734 uncertified substitute days in the whole school year were used on Mondays. This works out at an average of 340 on any given Monday. It is just over 0.5% of the teaching population.

In other words about one in every two hundred teachers could be absent on a Monday. This is far from the one in five alleged by the Minister.

The INTO said it was strange that the Minister would have at his finger tips detailed information in relation to sick leave while other information on the education system is unavailable to him. “This Minister cannot tell how many children are being educated in prefabs. He cannot tell how many schools will lose teachers next year. He cannot tell how many children will have no books next year. Yet he claims to know, inaccurately as it turns out,  the number of sick days taken on every day of the week.”

ENDS