Sir, – With reference to your editorial on teacher shortages (“There is more that can be done”, April 12th), the problem is more serious than the housing crisis, the need for a “Dublin allowance”, the need for incentives for students to train as teachers in priority subjects, the need for financial assistance with postgraduate courses or the restoration of middle management posts.
A bit like the past when no one talked about the work/life balance because there was one, it was not necessary in the past to create incentives to join a profession that was both rewarding and provided its members with a reasonable standard of living when compared to other professions.
Today, the middle class has been divided in two: an upper tier consisting of occupations such as medicine, law, accountancy, financial services and IT, which are very highly paid, and a lower tier such as teaching, nursing and (most of) the public service, which are not.
As long as that steep divide in pay exists, making it next to impossible for the lower tier to aspire to the standard of living of doctors and lawyers, why would a mathematics or a science graduate choose teaching when much more lucrative career opportunities are available to them?
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This problem has been developing for several years but the cause of it has not been identified. Now that it is beginning to become serious (the shortage of teachers, especially of certain subjects, will put at risk the education of the next generation of doctors, lawyers and accountants), the powers-that-be have woken up to it.
They have, however, failed to grasp that the root cause is the need to end the divide in the middle class either by paying some members of it a great deal less or others a great deal more, or a combination of both. Such are the problems of development and globalisation. – Yours, etc,
MICHAEL CLARKE,
Rathgar,
Dublin 6.