Sir, - Joe O'Toole is right in comparing the scandalous use of untrained "teachers" in the primary schools to the almost inconceivable scenario of children's medical care being entrusted to unqualified personnel (The Irish Times, September 4th). If this were the case there would not only be outrage but inevitable legal action.
The situation is even worse than he describes. Very young children, between four and six years, many in disadvantaged circumstances to begin with, are victims of this unpardonable make-do policy. Frequently young children's early experience of school is one where "teachers" come and go with a frequency that plays havoc with their impressionable emotional and intellectual needs. Children with additional special needs are inflicted with what could well amount to professional neglect.
And it's not the schools' or the teachers' fault. Sometimes principals and school boards have to turn away fully trained and competent applicants for teaching posts because of the Departmental restrictions. The Department may insist that there is no evidence of large numbers of foreign trained teachers "queuing up" for such posts. The queues are being formed by willing, home-grown, Irish-trained, and highly capable Montessori teachers - many, if not all, competent to teach the Gaeilge curriculum to the level required.
Is the present Minister aware the NCEA is the awarding body for this particular training College's four-year degree; that students take practice placements in ordinary national schools; and that each year every student spends at least 30 hours receiving training in special education? Or that our graduates are specialists, though not exclusively so, in early childhood education?
And Joe O'Toole might be gently reminded that the INTO congress last Easter called for the extension of the infant cycle to three years instead of the existing two - a commendable aspiration which this college supports and will be happy to service.
There is not so much a shortage of teachers in Ireland as a shortage of vision to use the resources we already have. - Is mise,
Bernadette Burns, Principal, St Nicholas Montessori College Ireland, Adelaide Street, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.