WHAT ARE YA going to do for the next few months?" "Aw, I think I'll teach." "Teach what?" "In primary school." "But you aren't qualified." "You don't have to be. Your Leaving will do you."
This conversation between two young women - who looked as if they were barely old enough to have sat their Leaving Cert - was overheard on a recent bus journey.
The INTO says that the substitute situation has worsened recently and seems to be worse than last year - which was bad. A number of school principals have advertised for substitutes in the local and national press but are getting no responses. Indeed, the INTO points out that there are unfilled, permanent positions which are attracting few or no applicants.
Joe O'Toole, general secretary of the INTO, says "the teacher shortage has reached crisis proportions and principals have had to resort to a variety of options."
These options include dividing pupils around the other classes and persuading retired teachers to return to the classroom or the principals may employ people with other qualifications or an untrained person simply to supervise classes.
All of these options are in use at the moment, according to the INTO.
On average there are 800 substitutes provided to schools each day 40 per cent of these are untrained. The basic requirement for substitute teaching in primary schools is, as the young woman on the bus pointed out, the Leaving Cert.
About 600 graduates will come but of the training colleges this year. Of these, 420 have done the conventional teaching training course and 180 are graduates who have completed a one-and-a-half-year course, which was introduced as a special measure.
O'Toole says there is a "clear need for introducing a further cycle of the graduate course and for significantly increasing the intake into the teacher-training colleges over the next four years".
Another solution would be to increase panels of supply teachers. There are pilot schemes operating in Mayo, Limerick city and Dublin, whereby teachers on panels are permanently employed, but work as substitutes.
It is far more beneficial for schools and pupils to have the same people substituting regularly, the INTO sags.
