Finian McGrath
Ceist:404. Deputy Finian McGrath asked the Minister for Education and Skills his views on a matter (details supplied). [38052/12]
Amharc ar fhreagraTuesday, 18 September 2012
Ceisteanna (404)
Freagraí scríofa
It has been the policy of my Department for some time that only qualified and registered teachers should be employed by schools. This is set out most recently in Circular Letter 31/2011. Current recruitment procedures direct schools to ensure that teachers proposed for appointment to publicly paid posts must be registered with the Teaching Council and have qualifications appropriate to the sector and suitable to the post for which they are proposed.
Only where an employer can satisfactorily demonstrate that every reasonable effort has been made to recruit an appropriately qualified and registered teacher, may an unqualified or unregistered person be recruited pending the recruitment of an appropriately qualified and registered teacher. This provision must be inserted in the employment contract. The employer must repeat the process to recruit an appropriately qualified and registered teacher within the period of any such contract and in any event within the school year. An unregistered person employed pending recruitment of an appropriately qualified and registered teacher at any point after September 2010 should have no expectation of continued employment beyond the period of time that it takes the school to source a registered teacher.
The Education (Amendment) Act 2012 was enacted on 23 May 2012. This Act provides for a number of education-related matters, including provision to enable the implementation of section 30 of the Teaching Council Act, 2001. Section 30 of the Teaching Council Act, once commenced, will prohibit the payment of persons employed as a teacher in a recognised school from Oireachtas funds where they are not registered with the Teaching Council save for very limited, exceptional circumstances which will be set out in Ministerial Regulations.
It is the intention of the Minister to commence section 30 during the 2012/2013 school year. Once commenced it will be an absolute legal requirement and current provisions under Section 3.3 of Circular 31/2011 will no longer apply. This will mean that an appropriately qualified person whose registration with the Teaching Council is pending at the time of appointment cannot not be paid from Oireachtas funds until he or she is registered. In addition, there cannot be any retrospective payment in respect of a period for which a person was not registered. This provision will reinforce the Department's long-standing position that education in recognised schools funded by the State must be delivered by appropriately regulated professionals.