Retired teachers get subbing work despite crisis

SCHOOLS are still giving substitution work to hundreds of retired teachers despite an unemployment crisis for thousands of teachers who can't get work. Figures from the Department of Education show almost one-tenth of subbing hours are provided to retired staff despite Education Minister Batt O'Keeffe's plea with school boards to give work to recent graduates trying to gain experience.

The payroll data for September and October shows 861 retired teachers were used by the country's 3,300 primary schools. At almost 500 second level schools for which figures were available, 193 retired teachers were employed in the same period and worked 6,321 hours or an average 32.75 hours each.

At primary level, the 6,603 days worked in the first half of the term by retired teachers represented almost 8% of all 85,200 substitute days worked. However, there has been some improvement as retired teachers accounted for 11.6% of the overall substitute days worked in the last full school year up to June.

At second level, the proportion of substitute cover provided by retirees is relatively smaller at just 2.7% of all 234,415 substitute and casual hours, which is just slightly lower than the 2.8% of such cover they worked in the 2008/09 school year.

Mr O'Keeffe said he would love to get the support of teacher unions in relation to work for newly-qualified teachers, having raised the subject during the summer and in a letter to all schools in early October.

"I've exhorted that newly qualified teachers would get an opportunity to do substitute teaching at this time, and I'd love the unions' support to give an opportunity to these young teachers to gain experience," he said.

"The reality is that there is quite a high number of retired teachers doing substitute work, and obviously I'd prefer to see young qualified graduates getting experience," Mr O'Keeffe said.

The Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO) said it had explicitly asked schools in the September edition of its monthly magazine to prioritise teachers without regular employment for substitute work.

"The minister had our unambiguous and unequivocal support for this call six weeks before he wrote to schools on the subject in the second week in October," said INTO incoming general secretary Sheila Nunan.

She said it was inevitable that some schools would have to rely on retired teachers to cover some percentage of substitute work, as it is not always possible to secure the services of an unwaged teacher in a particular place or on a particular day.

"For the best part of a decade, schools needed retired teachers to ensure that qualified teachers filled substitute places. But overnight, Government cutbacks put hundreds of young teachers on the dole and many arrangements for the early part of the school year were made before the unemployment crisis was fully known," Ms Nunan said.

Schools are entitled to paid substitute cover for teachers absent on maternity leave, on certified sick leave and some other circumstances, but cover for uncertified sick leave has been restricted by the Department of Education since last January. In 2008, almost 174,000 days of maternity leave were taken by primary teachers and the figure was almost 154,000 up to mid-October 2009.