More teaching jobs will come on stream next year following a significant announcement made by the Minister for Education and Science last Friday. Micheal Martin is to create 1,000 additional teaching posts to go into primary and second levels in a move described as "the largest single increase ever".
The 1,000 new posts will comprise 700 to be allocated to improve the general staffing of second-level schools; an additional 100 posts will be appointed to second-level schools to focus on early school-leaving programmes and 200 new posts will be created in primary schools that are participating in a revised primary-school disadvantage initiative, which is to be launched this week.
"These appointments, and the retention within the system of posts which would otherwise be lost due to falling enrolments, will mean that the pupil/teacher ratios in both sectors will decline further during the next school year," Martin explained. "At primary level, the pupil/teacher ratio will fall below 20:1 for the first time ever."
Further developments which will impact on the supply of teachers at primary level could result from the launch last week of the Commission on the Points System report. It is not certain whether the Minister will act on its recommendation that students who receive their second-level education through the medium of Irish be eligible to apply for places in teacher-training colleges, which have formerly been set aside for Gaeltacht applicants only.
"We are examining that (recommendation) but we haven't made any decisions," the Minister said at the press conference on Friday, adding: "There are many good students who are not in all-Irish schools."
Up to now 10 per cent of places have been set aside for applicants from Gaeltacht areas. One thousand students were taken into teacher-training colleges this year, an increase of 250 on the year before. Running parallel with the main teacher training programmes is the conversion degree programme which currently has 280 students who are expected to graduate in the middle of next year.
"During the consultative process," the Commission explains in its final report, "the point was made that these reserved places should be open to pupils who attend an all-Irish stream in a second-level school. The Commission accepts this point and recommends that students who received all their second-level education through the medium of Irish should be eligible to apply for a place within this quota."
In a statement issued by Gaelscoileanna, the national co-ordinating body for Irish-medium schools, on foot of the Commission's report, there is no mention of this particular recommendation. The organisation wants to highlight that it is "extremely disappointed at the recommendation to end the allocation of additional marks to those students who answer the Leaving Cert through the medium of Irish."
"Gan amhras taimid anshasta gur thainig an moladh sin anios. Ta ganntanas muinteoiri ann agus ta bearna ansin le lionadh go foill," arsa Fionnuala Ni Chaisil, oifigeach chaidreamh poibli Ghaelscoileanna.
In a further development last week, Micheal Martin met Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness, the newly-appointed Minister for Education at the Northern Ireland Department of Education headquarters in Bangor, Co Down, where the two ministers had wide-ranging discussions. The agenda included discussions on harmonisation of teaching qualifications as well as special needs education and the Irish language.
The meeting marked another first for Northern Ireland's fledgling administration as the first trip north by a Dublin-based minister to do business with the new regime.
