Teacher Supply 25/3/08

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

25th March 2008

INTO General Secretary John Carr demands report on teacher supply

John Carr, INTO General Secretary, today demanded a study into the supply and demand situation for primary teachers, including substitute teachers for the period 2008 to 2016. He told the Education Minister Mary Hanafin that he wanted her Department to commission the ESRI to provide such a report, before the end of this school year.

“Without such a study you are flying blind, unable to say with any certainty if you will have available to you next year, the year after that or the year after that again, the most basic resource every child needs – a fully trained primary teacher.”

Mr Carr said the issue of overcrowded classes would not be resolved until determined action was brought about on the issue of teacher supply. “I told you this last year Minister that we were waiting for an immediate announcement of increased places in the Colleges of Education to underpin your commitment to class size reductions,” he said. The minimal increase provided so far is a token gesture, one that will have absolutely no impact on class size.”

He said successive governments had got the issue of teacher supply spectacularly wrong for years. “The regression caused by the closure of Carysfort College in the 1980s wasn’t addressed until the late 1990s when intake to the colleges here was increased,” he said. “Then it was only in response to INTO protests that 1,600 classrooms had untrained personnel in them pretending to be teachers.”

He said Ireland was depending on the UK to train huge numbers of primary teachers. “We don’t rely on Gordon Brown to train gardai, doctors or engineers,” said Carr. “Why teachers? This is absurd and must end now!”

ENDS.