Number of teachers unemployed

evolving_doors

GSOIRL wrote: »

Even the ones lucky enough to get work are being treated unequally by being put on a much lower pay scale.

just wondering, but did anyone from any union come in to talk to ye at the end?

clunked

Crazyteacher wrote: »

They didn't tell you before you entered the course how bad it is. And has been for quite some time!

Why would the education departments of the colleges talk themselves out of a job, or no business for Hibernian College either.

katydid

Corkgirl18 wrote: »

I just graduated this June as a secondary school teacher. The above posts are quite hard to read for someone whose just graduated.
Its a pity we weren't told anything about the job situation while we were in college..

Maybe they assume you read the newspapers and watch the news on tv...

mtoutlemonde

katydid wrote: »

Maybe they assume you read the newspapers and watch the news on tv...

Yes and research before you start a course. The employment situation was every bit as bad four/five years ago.

spurious

The 'in a few years' it was going to be all much better is now here and it's as bad if not worse. Only difference is we now have hundreds more qualified teachers.

janes1234

Corkgirl18 wrote:

I just graduated this June as a secondary school teacher. The above posts are quite hard to read for someone whose just graduated. Its a pity we weren't told anything about the job situation while we were in college..

To be fair its up to you to do that research. Its all over the news.or talk to any teacher out there. The 'we werent told' wont get you much sympathy Im afraid.

GSOIRL

mtoutlemonde wrote: »

Yes and research before you start a course. The employment situation was every bit as bad four/five years ago.

It might of been just as hard to get a job 4 or 5 years ago but at least when you started you were treated fairly and put on an equal pay scale. For someone who went to college in 2007. 2008, 2009, 2010 to do a 4 year BEd how were they supposed to know that they would be f**cked over and paid so much less when they qualified?

Johngoose

The Middle East seems to be the place to teach and I'm not talking about Wexford!:-) Free accommodation and better wages than here.:-)

Johngoose

There is an election coming up which may well equal more teaching jobs. But I think that there are far too many teachers being trained every year and far too many already teaching abroad who have to come back one day.I think they should close teacher training colleges for say 4/5 years, to calm the situation. They shut down Templemore and stopped training guards for a number of years, which seems to have allieviated the situation. Long term I think the teaching situation in this country is fcuked

Corkgirl18

Well the recent posts are all super helpful and supportive.. :rolleyes:
I was never looking for sympathy. I was merely expressing an opinion.
Yes, 5 years ago the teaching profession still wasn't fantastic but the unemployment rate was at one of its highest and so all sectors were suffering.
A lot can change in 5 years so it was hard to know if teaching was still going to be as poor. It was also before the new scales and such were implemented.

We were told on our first day that every student our head lecturer taught over the past 5 years was employed. I'm thinking that was probably a lie.

katydid

Corkgirl18 wrote: »

Well the recent posts are all super helpful and supportive.. :rolleyes:
I was never looking for sympathy. I was merely expressing an opinion.
Yes, 5 years ago the teaching profession still wasn't fantastic but the unemployment rate was at one of its highest and so all sectors were suffering.
A lot can change in 5 years so it was hard to know if teaching was still going to be as poor. It was also before the new scales and such were implemented.

We were told on our first day that every student our head lecturer taught over the past 5 years was employed. I'm thinking that was probably a lie.

I'm sorry, but you're a third level graduate, looking for a job where you will be broadening the minds of young people - and you say you weren't aware of something the dogs in the street knew. You're not four years old; you don't need third level lecturers to hold your hand and tell you about the real world. The minimum they would expect is that you would have an awareness.
You may be surprised at the reaction you got here, but let's be honest, you kind of brought it on yourself.

Crazyteacher

Corkgirl18 wrote: »

Well the recent posts are all super helpful and supportive.. :rolleyes:
I was never looking for sympathy. I was merely expressing an opinion.
Yes, 5 years ago the teaching profession still wasn't fantastic but the unemployment rate was at one of its highest and so all sectors were suffering.
A lot can change in 5 years so it was hard to know if teaching was still going to be as poor. It was also before the new scales and such were implemented.

We were told on our first day that every student our head lecturer taught over the past 5 years was employed. I'm thinking that was probably a lie.

Maybe not employed as teachers. And if in teaching , maybe subbed a day counts to him

mirrorwall14

Sorry but I graduated just before the recession hit and the situation was just as bad then as it is now (albeit with better payscale). However I went into it with my eyes open, well aware that it took an average of 7 years to get a full time job in teaching even at the best pupil teacher ratios. For that reason for example I also followed my head as well as my heart and did a BA even though I had been accepted to the trinity BMUS. I knew my job potential would be limited with only a subject such as music.

Everyone should be doing the research before they go into a career. This has been the situation since the early 2000s. And if you go back further it was the same in the 80s!

katydid

mirrorwall14 wrote: »

Sorry but I graduated just before the recession hit and the situation was just as bad then as it is now (albeit with better payscale). However I went into it with my eyes open, well aware that it took an average of 7 years to get a full time job in teaching even at the best pupil teacher ratios. For that reason for example I also followed my head as well as my heart and did a BA even though I had been accepted to the trinity BMUS. I knew my job potential would be limited with only a subject such as music.

Everyone should be doing the research before they go into a career. This has been the situation since the early 2000s. And if you go back further it was the same in the 80s!

I started in college in 77, and did "sensible" subjects, to improve my employability for teaching. Even back then, we knew it wasn't going to be easy. It took me 12 years to get the permanent job. And no CIDs or pro-rata back then; it was the dole queue every Christmas and Easter...

spurious

..and Hallowe'en.

We were also spun the yarn about everyone being employed when I was in college in the eighties. It wasn't true then either. I was lucky and only part-time for two years, but then after I was appointed, the next full-time employees in our (large) VEC only came about 8 years later.

katydid

spurious wrote: »

..and Hallowe'en.

We were also spun the yarn about everyone being employed when I was in college in the eighties. It wasn't true then either. I was lucky and only part-time for two years, but then after I was appointed, the next full-time employees in our (large) VEC only came about 8 years later.

Summer was teaching Spanish students for me...

We weren't told one way or the other. But my parents were teachers, and I was pretty clued in as to the way things were. And anyway it was pretty obvious if you read the news.

imelle

i think the issue is the Hibernia. that never should have been passed. I know a lot of people who are 30-40 + who did the course either in primary and post-primary and now younger people coming through aren't getting work because it is been given to those that are seen as more "mature" and less likely to have to go on a maternity leave in a few years.

rainbowtrout

imelle wrote: »

i think the issue is the Hibernia. that never should have been passed. I know a lot of people who are 30-40 + who did the course either in primary and post-primary and now younger people coming through aren't getting work because it is been given to those that are seen as more "mature" and less likely to have to go on a maternity leave in a few years.

And why shouldn't they get the jobs? People who have worked in industry or have a different type of experience can bring a lot to a classroom. Plenty of people in their 30s look for maternity leave. In my experience of teaching far more so than people in their 20s as people are leaving it later to start a family.

Hibernia is only part of the issue. All of the colleges are churning out way too many teaching graduates from the PME and from their teacher training courses. When I graduated from UL in 2000, there was about 30 students in each of the four teacher training courses. Generally graduates were able to find work if they wanted it back then. Now they have more than doubled the numbers on those courses, but the jobs aren't there to sustain that number of graduates, and that's only one college.

Added to that is the number of students applying for and being accepted to the PME with poor subject combinations. Plenty of people on here who only have one teaching subject or have CSPE/SPHE as their second subject, looking for a course they can do to get a second viable subject to make them employable.

mirrorwall14

Yeah when I did my PDE in Maynooth there were too many of us to fit in education house lecture hall if everyone showed up. Bit of a hint there was too many of us on the course of we can't fit the theatre of the purpose built education dept...

evolving_doors

In fairness though any mention of Teaching issues in the media is typically immediately whitewashed with deflection and strawman arguments about Summer holidays/great pensions/22 hrs work.

Ive yet to hear this topic mentioned without sidetracking. I wouldnt blame anyone for being lured in by the land of milk and honey that teaching is purported to be.

As regards universities churning them out, ya pays yer money, ya takes yer choice. Still plenty of courses in creative writing but very few making money. The rubbish that some lecturers spout though is sickening, we were also told about the millions of retirements coming up and how lucky we were!

Alex Meier

Gebgbegb wrote: »

In fairness though any mention of Teaching issues in the media is typically immediately whitewashed with deflection and strawman arguments about Summer holidays/great pensions/22 hrs work.

Ive yet to hear this topic mentioned without sidetracking. I wouldnt blame anyone for being lured in by the land of milk and honey that teaching is purported to be.

As regards universities churning them out, ya pays yer money, ya takes yer choice. Still plenty of courses in creative writing but very few making money. The rubbish that some lecturers spout though is sickening, we were also told about the millions of retirements coming up and how lucky we were!

This.

There are too many people who want to become teachers who do not realise what an energy sapping, demanding and stressful job secondary teaching has become.

You cannot even compare it to five years ago.

When I started teaching 15 years ago . . Teachers actually enjoyed their jobs.

I'm seeing that less and less now.

katydid

Alex Meier wrote: »

This.

There are too many people who want to become teachers who do not realise what an energy sapping, demanding and stressful job secondary teaching has become.

You cannot even compare it to five years ago.

When I started teaching 15 years ago . . Teachers actually enjoyed their jobs.

I'm seeing that less and less now.

It's impossible to know what any job is like until you actually do it.

As a teacher of 34 years experience, I still love teaching. It's all the other bits I hate...

ethical

Teaching has changed considerably over the past 30 years it would seem. Infact teaching is suffering as there is less and less time given over to it due to 'all the other things' non-teacher related that has become part of the profession.Of course it would be very interesting to find out what the rate of teacher unemployment actually is.As we are all too aware (and some of us more than others) is the amount of young teachers that are living off titbits of teaching hours. Then there are the teachers who had to emigrate over 20 years ago ,in the previous economic downturn,who are,in some cases back in the system again but will have to work on until they are 68 years of age or more in order to get a full pension.Some of them love their profession but there are others that are stuck doing it for economic circumstances. Speaking to a few colleagues ,the other day,it pains us greatly to look at the mess we are in as a profession.We look around and see members of the Gardai retiring after giving their 35 years service and them still quite young men and women,with their pensions secured.Fair play to them I would not do their job for one minute! One colleague reckons that their will be 'another cull' as he put it to 'get rid' of the teachers around the age of 50 so as to make way for the younger graduates who will be much cheaper to employ and will have to work longer in order to have any pension rights.Unfortunately Ireland is a very 'Mé Féin' society that does not give a damn about how the system is failing,our political leaders are in it for themselves and really couldn't care less about our young people other than the odd soundbite when there is an election looming.

katydid

ethical wrote: »

T. Then there are the teachers who had to emigrate over 20 years ago ,in the previous economic downturn,who are,in some cases back in the system again but will have to work on until they are 68 years of age or more in order to get a full pension.

They can't do that. They (we) have to retire at 65. That generation, who went abroad and came back in then nineties, are paying a fortune every month in AVC's in order to make up for the service years they've lost.