Too many teachers in our schools are Irish nationals

Surely whomever conducted this study laughed all the way to the Grant office?

Primary teaching in Ireland has particular requirements that 1st generation immigrants will be hard pushed to meet, namely Irish.

Now that should be much less of an issue for 2nd generation children of immigrants who were/are schooled in Ireland, but given that inward immigration in Ireland didn't really take hold until the late 90's and early 2000's, those children would only be hitting Uni around now.

So maybe a more balanced question would be, what percentage of current first teaching students are of immigrant stock?
One cannot expect a shift of 10% of a demographic in a tenured profession to occur with the immediacy it happens in the general population.

Entrance to college places is 100% transparent, everyone from every background gets a chance to apply to train to be a teacher.

But if your not arsed to get sufficient education to apply and be successful then those that are get the places.

More focus on the most suitable for the positions and less focus on ensuring every skin colour and ethnic minority is represented.

seamus wrote: »

The Irish requirement disproportionately affects men.

Three-fifths of students who take honours Irish at the leaving cert level are female, and half of those women get a Grade 3 or higher, versus just 40% of men.

I doubt Irish has a big effect on the numbers of male primary school teachers. The latest figures have 13% male, 87% female in Ireland. That's a big difference but the EU average is 15.4% male, 84.6% female, so there isn't a huge difference from that average. Denmark has the biggest percentage of male primary school teachers in the EU but that figure is only 30.9%.

Check out the stats from 2014/2015 (section 4.7, and check 4.6 too):

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-wamii/womenandmeninireland2016/education/

Sand wrote: »

Teachers ought to be significantly better educated than the general population, including a command of Irish.

So, teachers should be required to have honours English, and honours maths, and honours history, and honours geography, and honours in at least one science subject, because they teach all of these things too?

RayCun wrote:

So, teachers should be required to have honours English, and honours maths, and honours history, and honours geography, and honours in at least one science subject, because they teach all of these things too?

Perhaps you'd like to see anyone "rock on up" and let me teach. A prerequisite for teaching children is a requirement that teachers should have a high level of academic achievement. That's what I want for my children.

RayCun wrote: »

So, teachers should be required to have honours English, and honours maths, and honours history, and honours geography, and honours in at least one science subject, because they teach all of these things too?

Sounds good.

TCM wrote: »

Perhaps you'd like to see anyone "rock on up" and let me teach. A prerequisite for teaching children is a requirement that teachers should have a high level of academic achievement. That's what I want for my children.

At the moment, honours English and honours maths are not required, but honours Irish is.
Why that one?

RayCun wrote: »

At the moment, honours English and honours maths are not required, but honours Irish is.
Why that one?

If you're arguing that standards should be raised across the board, no one is going to argue with that.

If you're arguing that a command of Irish should not be a qualification, in the context of this thread that is irrelevant. It is, and those who can meet the requirement (and I cannot) are not evenly distributed across society. So the whole idea that teachers must be representative of the general population is based on a false premise.

RayCun wrote: »

We can see that teaching a subject in secondary school requires expertise in that subject. It makes sense to require a degree in that subject, or at the very least a good leaving cert result in that subject.

Primary school teachers are generalists. It makes sense to require high grades across the board, or a generally high level of achievement, to be a primary level teacher.

It doesn't make sense to require primary level teachers to have expertise in one particular subject among the many they have to teach.

That's a different topic to the question raised in the OP. There's been many threads on the necessity of Irish, and I don't actually place huge priority on it. But the system does, arguably for good reasons.

But in any case if you're trying to argue that only Irish differentiates teachers from the general population, I believe you're mistaken. The points required for primary teaching in 2018 were 462. For comparison purposes, you could enter courses in Engineering (443) or Architecture (447) at UCC. 289 Points would get you into any course you wanted in Dublin Business School. Teachers aren't just getting by on Honours Irish. Primary teaching is in the upper echelons of points requirements and a single A in Honours Irish will not get you to the required points.

I'm not suggesting an A in honours Irish is sufficient.
I'm saying it shouldn't be necessary.

At the moment, if you have Irish and the points from other subjects, you only need pass maths, or pass English.
Why should Irish be the special requirement of those three subjects?

Yeah, I specifically said "of those three subjects"

I'm guessing you would have been in favour of removing the requirement until you realized it disadvantaged immigrants.

zapitastas wrote: »

Drop into a pop up gaeltacht and you can speak as Gaeilge and have a few pints at the same time. Just because you have no interest in the national language there is no need to denigrate it.

Denigrating it and acknowledging that it's at most a recreational pastime for most Irish people are two very different things. You don't have to denigrate Irish to state that it's absolutely f*cking moronic for it to be a requirement for literally any profession for which it isn't directly relevant.

Schools should just employ one Gaeilgoir per school to teach Irish to all the different primary classes and then let people who don't speak Irish apply to teach all the other subjects if they so desire. Requiring fluency in a non-functional language for a job is completely mental.