Vol. 415 No. 9
21 Mr. J. Higgins asked the Minister for Education if his attention has been drawn to the survey published on 20 December, 1991 by the Council of Teachers Unions on the subject of high stress levels among teachers; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
I am aware that a report on "teachers and stress" was published last December. While accepting that teaching is a stressful profession, it must also be said that in recent years many improvements have occurred in teachers' conditions.
I understand that the report makes recommendations in relation to a number of areas, including reduction in class size, curriculum reform, a code of behaviour, buildings and in-service training. There have been many developments in these areas in recent times. Stress is a factor most occupations have to reckon with and I hope that steady progress in these areas will help teachers in coping with the level of stress unavoidable in their profession.
Is the Minister aware that in the survey referred to 35 per cent of the 1,500 teachers interviewed showed signs of high levels of psychological stress and low levels of job satisfaction? Would he agree that, resulting from the huge influx of teachers in the mid-sixties, teaching is now becoming a greying profession, that education is suffering from hardening of the arteries, that there is need to let people out at the top, allow in young highly motivated, trained, unemployed teachers to undertake the task?
The Deputy's job is stressful, as indeed is mine. I am afraid stress is something from which none of us can divorce ourselves. All available medical advice is that a certain level of manageable stress is necessary for us to do our jobs properly, at the edge, as it were. I have great sympathy for the difficulty in which teachers find themselves. These days they cannot afford to relax in front of classes. I suppose pupils these days are somewhat less compliant than they used be. In addition, the curriculum changes constantly and they must cope with those changes. Also a stressful aspect for teachers is that quite rightly, parents are now much more demanding than they were in the past. This report, the Deputy's input and other comments in regard to stress, all add up to the fact that it can be a stressful job. Having said that, we have made very substantial progress in reducing the pupil/teacher ratio, in reforming the curriculum in some areas helpful to them, revising codes of conduct, updating schools buildings, improving in-service training and a range of items helping to take some pressure off teachers. I cannot promise to remove it completely but we can endeavour to modernise their working conditions making life somewhat easier for them.
Nonetheless would the Minister agree it would be good economic as well as educational sense to allow teachers out at the top salary scale of £22,000 per annum, and recruit them from the bottom of the scale, at £11,000 per annum? Furthermore, would he agree that he should seriously examine the possibility of devising a new, meaningful early retirement scheme?
I will certainly examine that if it is thought to be valuable in the context of the stress aspect.
