‘It’s an absolute disaster’: Secondary school forced to drop subjects due to teacher shortages (2024)

Last week school principal Déaglán Ó Laoire set up interviews for two vacant teaching posts at Coláiste Ráithín, an all-Irish secondary school in Bray, Co Wicklow.

Eight teachers were scheduled to be interviewed. Six pulled out in the days before the interview. Neither of the remaining two candidates showed up for interviews on the day.

“We have to remove subjects from the timetable, send students to other schools and put unqualified teachers in front of students,” says Ó Laoire.

“We have to recruit people without Irish, because it is unusual if more than one person applies for the advertised positions. Forget about finding someone who speaks Irish.”

As the school year gets under way, the 360-pupil school has had to remove German from the timetable for some classes. Other classes do not have a French teacher. The school also faces the prospect of having to drop the subject of design and communication graphics, despite having a specialised classroom.

In addition, it is down a special educational needs co-ordinator and resource teacher.

A teacher supply crisis in Greater Dublin and other urban areas has been well documented, driven by factors such as high rents. However, recruitment difficulties are greater still for Gaelcholáistí seeking qualified teachers who can teach their subjects through Irish.

Many schools are reluctant to draw attention to the extent of teacher shortages in case it reflects negatively on their standard of teaching and learning. Ó Laoire, however, says he is simply being honest with parents.

“We’re doing our level best. Parents are generally sympathetic and patient. I had to call 15 parents of first-year students last week who chose German to tell them it’s not happening. Most are fine — but If you chose a school because it offered German, it’s not fair,” he says.

The vacant teaching posts also mean that students are getting too many free classes which Ó Laoire says, are a “disaster” for teaching and learning.

He calculates that this week, alone, there will be a total of 132 class periods for which there is no teacher.

“You want your school to be best-in-class,” he says. “We are in places — absolutely — but there are huge gaps. Lots of staff are taking two free classes at a time to supervise. That’s against union rules, so we’re working on goodwill,” he says.

“I had two classes this morning and asked, ‘lads have you any homework’. And they said, ‘sir, we’ve had three free classes already’. It was only 12 o’clock.”

The difficulties are not new, says Ó Laoire, who has been principal since 2021.

The school has had to send small numbers of its students to other local schools to avail of subjects for the Leaving Cert, or else go “cap in hand” to neighbouring schools and hire their teachers to teach subjects outside of regular school time.

“The subjects change, but the difficulties remain the same,” he says.

The Department of Education says there are now “more teachers than ever” working in the education system.

While it said it accepted that some schools were facing challenges, it has pointed to a range of initiatives such as boosting student-teacher places by 20 per cent since 2018, expanding teaching posts at primary and second level and a new €2,000 fee refund scheme for teachers graduating with a professional master of education in 2024.

O’Leary, however, feels many measures to tackle the undersupply are piecemeal and says bolder steps such as making the professional master of education free are needed, as well as restoring allowances for teaching through Irish.

He hopes the situation will ease, but worries about the impact on the school: it lost 21 students over the summer.

“That’s three or four per year group, Word gets out that there’s loads of free classes and not enough teachers,” he says.

“At the end of day, you’re left putting out fires all over the place. The polite way to put it is that it’s suboptimal — but in reality, it’s an absolute disaster.”