LIMERICK city is suffering a teacher drain, with experienced teachers rushing to take retirement before the February deadline and newly qualified teachers hitting the emigration trail. INTO representative, Joe Lyons, predicted a crisis in Limerick schools as 31 teachers were honoured on their retirement at the weekend. “There have never been so many teachers taking retirement. They have done the maths and if they go before the February deadline, they will have the better retirement deal. If they stay working, they will work for two years and be no better off,” Mr Lyons told the Limerick Post.
On the other end of the scale, he said, young, enthusiastic and highly qualified teachers are “looking at the class numbers going up and they’re hitting the emigrant trail”.
The INTO official for the region said that while a lot of teachers would have stayed working for another few years, “they would be doing it for nothing so they’re going now”.
He described it as “ludicrous” that the Department has been sending out circulars, setting ambitious targets for literacy and numeracy.
“And at the same time they are proposing to increase class sizes. It’s not about having another couple of children per class.
“If you have two more per class in a 12 classroom school, you have to have an extra 24 children to retain the teachers that are already there. Then there is the situation where the school can’t employ temps to cover short-term illnesses and all the children are divided up between the classes. Then you have another 10 children being sent into a classroom where the numbers are already up”.
