Sir, – Much has been written of late regarding teacher shortages and the range of societal factors contributing to this problem.
These include housing shortages, high rental costs, lack of affordable childcare, the high cost of living, and the expense of obtaining a two-year master’s in education teaching qualification, all of which may lead to young teachers leaving Ireland to work overseas.
A rarely highlighted but no less intractable stumbling block to alleviating the problem of teacher shortages is the huge difficulty and delays experienced by returning Irish teachers in obtaining registration here from the Teaching Council, even following years of successful practice abroad in developed English-speaking countries, such as the US.
It is understandable that due diligence on the part of the Teaching Council is necessary to ensure Irish teachers qualified abroad are suitably qualified for the Irish education system. However, for such teachers the inordinate amounts of paperwork that must be submitted to support their applications for registration seems excessive.
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Submitted information is frequently met with requests for more. Time spent in sourcing this is followed by a wait of some months before the Teaching Council finally adjudicates on the application. There is little evidence of efficiency at work in the offices of the Teaching Council.
What should be a seamless process for the applicant becomes a prolonged endurance test.
It seems counterintuitive that the very body charged with the responsibility of registering teachers for teaching posts here is hopelessly deficient in aiding a solution to the problem of the teacher shortage.
The Teaching Council needs to up its game. – Yours, etc,
PJ McDERMOTT,
Westport,
Co Mayo.