Government urged to make teaching more attractive as retention becomes a ‘big challenge'

By Rebecca Black, Press Association

The Government has been urged to act to make the teaching profession more attractive.

The Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) said the retention of teachers within the system is now “as big a challenge as initial recruitment”.

They also said teachers are being deflected from teaching by ever-increasing administrative duties.

The union is pressing the Department of Education to introduce effective measures to retain those teachers who have recently started in the profession in the education system.

Put simply, teachers have to spend too much time on non-teaching workload generated by constant new programme, policy and administrative demands

TUI president Anthony Quinn said: “Teachers want to teach, yet it is abundantly clear that they are being distracted from teaching and learning by increasing administrative workload.

“In a survey of our members earlier this year, 92 per cent agreed that bureaucratic workload/paperwork that distracts from teaching has increased since they commenced their career.

“Separately, 92% agreed that ‘initiative overload’ is leading to burnout among teachers and principal teachers.

“Put simply, teachers have to spend too much time on non-teaching workload generated by constant new programme, policy and administrative demands.

“This culture of excessive paperwork has an obvious negative effect on teacher retention and must be urgently addressed.”

Mr Quinn also raised concerns around reduced pension provision, and said teachers returning from overseas should have service recognised.

He added a call for reinstatement of some allowances.

“Allowances payable for SEN qualification, teaching through Irish and teaching on an island were all abolished in 2012 and have made recruitment and retention in these schools more difficult,” he said.

“It is critically important for these schools that these be reinstated.”