A Dublin-based teacher has said that there is no incentive in Budget 2024 to encourage teachers to return to the profession.
Maria Markey Greene, who works at Rosmini Community School in Drumcondra, Dublin, has been a teacher for 17 years.
She said she is not surprised that there is a crisis in the retention and recruitment of teachers.
She added: “You expect if you get into a career where you spend sometimes eight or nine years of formal education, you just expect to not be looking at your pay cheque every month asking ‘can we have a holiday?'”
She said that the cost of electricity, food and fuel has gone up while teachers’ pay has remained the same, and a reduction in teacher recruitment numbers “makes it feel like you’re doing more work”.
She said: “More burnout is happening, people are seeking career breaks, they’re looking at ‘how do I get out of teaching?’
“It’s not as good a profession as it used to be. Teachers are going abroad or taking career breaks and not coming back.”
She said that Budget 2024 does not have “any incentive for somebody to want to come back to Ireland”.
She added: “If a teacher comes back from another country, there can be issues with getting recognised, for example.
“If it’s waiting for people to be trained, that will take a couple of years. And I also noticed that there was quite a significant increase in the training allowance for guards and nurses get a training allowance, there still isn’t an allowance given to the PME (Professional Master of Education) for secondary school teachers.
“They changed it from a one-year course to a two-year course. On the second year, you do a placement in the classroom, and you’re not paid for that. In other countries, there is an allowance – in Scotland, they give you 80 per cent of your salary.
“It’s an expensive year, and you’re doing full-time work without getting any pay, so it’s very difficult for you to take on another job at the same time.”
She said the government should reopen the public service pay deal and examine pay and hours, stating that there was “extra long pay scales for teachers over their career paths”.
She also called on the reinstatement of pay bumps to teachers who had completed a masters degree.
She said: “There is no incentive given in this budget for doing any additional training. So if you want additional special education teachers, the allowances haven’t been brought back.
“We used to have an allowance for teaching visually impaired and hearing impaired students. We used to have an allowance for having masters.”
She added that although the budget provides for 744 additional primary and secondary teachers, she would like to know where they are going to be recruited from.
She welcomed the extension of the free school book scheme to the junior cycle, but said it should “only be the start”, adding that a lot more investment was needed in secondary schools.
Ms Markey Greene said that the energy credit would help her and her family, but is not enough in the long term.
She added: “They’re a one-time measure and there are sustained increases. The wholesale price for oil went down last week, but we don’t see it as a petrol bump.
“I put 80 euro into my car for the first time ever in my entire life, it was shocking. I have a 1.6 litre hybrid car, so I’m doing the green model and it’s not a huge petrol tank.”
“We’re in our 40s and at our age I feel we shouldn’t be having discussions about whether to put the heating on,” she said.
“I’m a child of the 80s, my dad was unemployed. I remember St Vincent de Paul coming to the door.
“Have we gone back to that? You go to college to make a better life for you and your family but here we are, in our 40s, and having that conversation again, and having that same feeling of guilt when heating is mentioned.
“And its not just us, I hear others talking about it as well.”
By Gráinne Ní Aodha
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