asked the Minister for Education whether he will make provision to ensure that where a secondary school has extended the range of subjects offered by employing at its own expense, in the absence of fully-qualified teachers with the higher diploma in education, teachers otherwise qualified in these subjects, and where, either because these unqualified teachers are moved elsewhere or because qualified teachers become available, the school seeks to employ such qualified teachers, it will not be inhibited from doing so because of the restrictions on staff increases in the present year.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Employment of Secondary School Teachers.
32.
The position in this matter is that every case is considered on its merits. Factors taken into account include the existing staffing and the range of subjects provided in the school.
In cases like this where a school has endeavoured to widen its range of subjects and been unable to get qualified teachers and unqualified teachers are not transferred elsewhere and it can get qualified teachers, would the Parliamentary Secretary agree that the rigid application of the rule by his Department is simply narrowing the range of subjects and forcing schools so to narrow it and would he not agree that in cases like that sympathetic consideration should be given and that the additional teaching staff should be permitted so long as they are within the norms applied to secondary schools?
That is precisely the point. What the Deputy is arguing is that we should sanction unqualified teachers to be replaced by qualified teachers, and, when the Deputy says so long as they are within the norms, I agree with him. However, I must confess that I had some difficulty in interpreting the Deputy's question in the first instance. His question seems to imply that we should sanction the position where unqualified teachers who are not on incremental scales would be replaced in schools by qualified teachers who would be on incremental scales. That would be a further financial commitment on the part of the State and in many instances it would be creating a precedent whereby if unqualified teachers were taken on in one year, qualified teachers should follow the next year.
Question No. 33.
The Parliamentary Secretary misunderstands the case I am making which was of a school that would have been entitled to get qualified teachers under the ratios laid down by the Department but who could not find such teachers. Now, when the school seeks to employ them within those ratios, this new provision is preventing them from getting them and is forcing them to reduce the range of subjects. Would the Parliamentary Secretary not agree that, in the terms of his own reply, this case should be considered sympathetically?
I would agree. If the refusal of a post would result in the dropping of a subject, the matter would be given special consideration.