Job market for primary teachers?

Lu28

Following on from my other thread, I'm currently living in the UK and am hoping to retrain as a primary school teacher (I'm currently a solicitor) and then move home to Ireland.

In this day and age though, it would be nice to know what the job prospects are for primary teachers in Ireland before taking the leap!

dambarude

In two words, my answer would be something between 'not great' and 'very bad'. While it is not as bad (yet) as secondary teaching, employment is much scarcer than it was only a few years ago. At the moment there seems to be an oversupply of teachers. Around 1500-2000 are trained every year between post and undergraduate courses in colleges like Mary Immaculate, St. Pat's, Froebel, Marino and the online provider Hibernia, and that's not mentioning the number that return from training in England/Scotland etc. Visit the message board at www.educationposts.ie to get more information.

Lu28

That's really disappointing I had been talking to a friend who is applying to Hibernia and she seemed to be under the impression that the government had promised quite a good pipeline of primary teaching jobs over the next few years which had made me pretty hopeful. I obviously don't want to spend money on a course if there isn't any job at the end of it.

How are people with a career change generally perceived when going for a job?

(I have tried accessing that other website but seem to be having problems getting on to the message boards, will have to try again later)

dambarude

There are indeed going to be more jobs in the pipeline in coming years, but I believe that numbers of people training for primary teaching will soak that up pretty quickly.

How you will be perceived will depend on the principal/chairman etc. of the interview board you are going for. Based solely on what I've read on www.educationposts.ie, candidates who have trained in England may not be viewed as favourably as others. That's open to rebuttals though.

You need to register with the site to be able to view threads on educationposts, in case you didn't know:).

byhookorbycrook

The Dept may well cut teaching numbers again in the next budget and resource provision has been slashed, so jobs are hard to come by and may well be even rarer as things go on.