Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 6 December 2017
36. Deputy Kathleen Funchion asked the Minister for Education and Skills the way in which he is planning to address the current and potential teacher shortages in STEM subjects; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [51902/17]
Amharc ar fhreagraMy question concerns STEM subjects and the current and potential teacher shortages in those subjects. I know that the Minister has many ambitious plans around these subjects, but there is clearly an issue with the amount of teachers available to teach them. I would like to hear his thoughts on the matter.
In the last two years I have provided for the recruitment of in the region of 3,000 teachers at post-primary level. All of those posts for 2016-17 have been successfully filled and the process of filling the additional posts for the current year is almost complete. We are successfully filling the posts that we are making available.
As the Deputy knows, last week I launched a STEM policy statement and implementation plan which aims to make Ireland the best in Europe in STEM by 2026. This policy statement focusses on the many strengths in science, technology, engineering and mathematics education in Ireland while providing a roadmap to address the areas for development.
Some schools have reported shortages in recruiting teachers in specific subjects at post-primary level, including in STEM. The reasons for this are complex. Part of the reason is due to an imbalance in the availability of teachers in certain subjects; for example, a large proportion of teachers training as geography teachers and a small proportion choosing to train in subjects such as physics.
As part of the implementation of the STEM strategy I am determined to deliver increased teacher supply in key priority areas. My officials are gathering and analysing baseline data. We are also assessing specific policy initiatives which can accelerate supply in critical areas. This would include measures to deliver a higher proportion of those entering initial teacher education at undergraduate or masters level in the priority areas, to upgrade the skills of existing teachers and to identify possible sources of qualified persons who are not now teaching.
I want to make a suggestion on the matter. I welcome some of the suggestions, especially of increasing the number of female students taking STEM for the leaving certificate by 40%. However, we need to start at post-primary level, because nobody is going to teach chemistry, physics or the other subjects if they have not studied those subjects at secondary school level. We need to incentivise those subjects so that people are studying at secondary school level and will progress into college and postgraduate level. That is an area where we need to go back to the drawing board and incentivise those subjects at that stage, because there is clearly a general issue of accessing teachers, particularly teachers who are qualified for the subject they end up teaching. It will become a crisis in the STEM subjects and while the plan is ambitious I fear that it will remain only a plan because it will be impossible to achieve if we do not increase the amount of teachers available to teach STEM subjects.
Another area we should look at is pay for new entrants to teaching. I am sure that many new entrants are discouraged at the moment, given the level of pay available. I encourage the Minister to look at it at post-primary level and see if we can start to encourage people to take on the subjects at that stage. If one has not had a grounding in particular subjects, by the time a person gets to college it is too late.
I do not disagree with anything the Deputy says. We have set an ambition to increase the uptake at leaving certificate level. I believe that the new way of teaching science at junior cycle will encourage more people into it. Our promotion of extra-curricular science, through supporting the expansion of SciFest, the BT Young Scientist exhibition awards and CoderDojo has had a proven impact, particularly on girls choosing science subjects.
There is clearly a need to have a very focused look at supply in areas such as physics and chemistry where we need people who graduate in these subjects to move into the teaching profession. I will be taking a hard look at how we can incentivise that move to make sure that our ambitions are not held up by needs of that nature. There is a tightness of supply in other subjects as well, as we have discussed at committee. A range of methods have been used in the past that have been successful. We will review the subjects in total to make sure that we have a suite of measures that will have an impact on this.
I welcome that response. I have another suggestion which applies to the entirety of our education system and that concerns the whole idea of continuous assessment. Perhaps we can encourage students into these subjects by seeking to introduce a continuous assessment model. The subjects are quite difficult and are perhaps a bit more intimidating than other subjects. The idea of taking on chemistry or physics is not always a student's first choice. We need to be more creative in general when it comes to our education system and if there is such a big shortage in these STEM subject areas we should look at continuous assessment as part of the grading process in those subjects. This might encourage more students to take on those subjects.
The Deputy has another question later on. The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, NCCA, is looking at this matter. I agree that it is hard to teach science on the basis of a memory retention exam at the end. It is very much suited to continuous assessment. There are issues around continuous assessment, with teachers' unions and teachers themselves concerned with judging their own students. That has resulted in the framework that we now have in the junior cycle where there is separate portfolio of achievement and SEC supervised exams. I hope that model will have a very good impact on the junior cycle.
Science in particular does lend itself to a different approach. Hopefully some consensus will emerge which will lead to different formats of assessment in the future. We will await the NCCA's report.
