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Irish education policy converts urgency into process
). In 2012, the Sahlberg Report called for effective modelling of teacher supply and demand “as a matter of urgency”. Fourteen years later, the department has commissioned a “rapid literature review”.
You could hardly make it up. Successive ministers for education have acknowledged the problem, announced initiatives, established working groups, consulted stakeholders and produced action plans. The one constant throughout has been the growing difficulty schools face in actually finding teachers. Principals hardly need an international literature review to tell them what is happening.
They have been left to operate what amounts to an annual educational transfer market in advertising and re-advertising posts, sometimes without a single suitably qualified applicant; chasing substitutes, reorganising timetables while trying to save subjects becoming increasingly difficult to offer, with existing teachers being asked to stretch further to plug the gaps and sometimes facing the deeply unsatisfactory prospect of classes being taught by teachers outside their specialist subjects. There is, of course, value in learning from other countries.
But after 14 years, the problem is surely no longer a shortage of evidence. It is a shortage of action. Electric Picnic 2026: Women’s urinals, Guinness ... and that Barefoot GardenIrish education policy has developed an extraordinary talent for converting urgency into process. When confronted with a crisis, we commission a report.
When the report identifies the problem, we establish a group. When the group reports, we consult. And when sufficient time has passed, we commission another report to discover what everyone has apparently forgotten. The teacher shortage does not require further discovery.
It requires political decisions, some of them expensive, some difficult and some considerably less comfortable than commissioning another report. – Yours, etc,Tesco worker sacked for taking bakery items before they became ‘free to staff’ loses unfair dismissal claimParakeets have Londoners in a flap and hunters loading their rifles
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