I am raising my concerns about the duration of the post-graduate course in primary education in the context of the current scarcity of primary teachers and the fact that all panels are exhausted. A recent advertisement for primary teachers in my county was responded to by only one applicant — which has also happened in other counties — and that applicant was unsuitable for reasons which I will not go into but he or she had recently been made redundant. The place had to be given to that person as there were no other applicants but he or she withdrew a week or two later because he or she was totally unsuitable.
I am not criticising the post-graduate course in primary education, which is excellent — it was described to me as a Rolls Royce course. However, it takes 18 months for a post-graduate student to complete this course. The equivalent course in Wales and England takes only 12 months to complete. I have been told by education experts that ours is an excellent course. However, I am asking, in view of the urgent shortage of primary teachers, for the course to be changed so that post-graduates would spend the first 12 months of the course in college and then begin to teach while completing the last six months of the course either on a modular basis or at weekends. If that were done we could have the first batch of post-graduate students with teaching qualifications into our primary schools next September, which would help alleviate the chronic shortage of primary teachers.
It takes graduates with a BA degree and a Higher Diploma in Education only one year to qualify to move from secondary to primary teaching. They have already acquired many of the skills necessary for teaching as they have spent time in the classroom. This is an urgent matter. Students of this post-graduate course in primary education must be allowed into the classroom next September.
I need not give the Minister a litany of the difficulties experienced trying to fill primary teacher vacancies in every county. A Wexford primary school advertised for a teacher in the past few weeks and received three replies. Only one applicant turned up for the interview but he or she did not accept the job.
There are no qualified primary teachers available to take up jobs in our classrooms at the moment. As a result, some quite unsuitable people who are not sufficiently qualified are teaching. I ask the Minister to ensure that post-graduates are released into the classroom after they have completed the first 12 months of their course. They can complete the last six months of the course at weekends or on a modular basis. That is the only way to resolve the scarcity.
I have concerns about the way Northern Ireland teachers are allowed to teach in our primary schools. I know the Irish qualification must be taken in three years but that needs to be looked at. Our youngsters need only to leave our primary schools with good conversational Irish and a love of their language and culture. We must examine the Irish qualification we are insisting on for non-nationals teaching in our primary schools and ensure we are doing what is right by our children. I would rather have a well qualified teacher from Northern Ireland teaching my children than an unqualified, unsuitable person from the Twenty-Six counties teaching them just because they have a smattering of Irish — or had a smattering when they qualified 20 or 30 years ago. We are employing unsuitable people because of the scarcity of primary teachers rather than taking suitable people who trained North of the Border, in England or elsewhere. Let us get the right person into the classroom by allowing post-graduates to teach after they have completed the first 12 months of their course.
