‘Teaching graduates must be given guaranteed first year in classroom’ – Bradley | Latest Newry News, Newry Sport and Newry Business for Newry City

‘Teaching graduates must be given guaranteed first year in classroom’ – Bradley

SDLP Newry and Armagh MLA Dominic Bradley has said that it is totally unacceptable that there are 8,500 teachers on the Substitute Teachers Register, many of whom have never had a full time teaching job.

Speaking to Newry Times, Mr Bradley, who is a former teacher, said: “This is an extremely frustrating situation for the thousands of young teachers who are eager to practice their chosen career but who cannot find permanent work here. An equally shocking statistic is the fact that only one substitute teacher found a job this year. Unfortunately the situation will not improve given the current pressures on school budgets unless the Minister of Education takes positive action to tackle the situation.”

He continued, “The SDLP has long called for an initial guaranteed first year of teaching for all newly qualified teachers to enable them to get at least a year’s experience to launch their careers. This is a situation which cannot be allowed to continue considering the investment which we have made in educating teachers and the encouragement that has been given to them to enter the profession.”

“Our schools need a continual injection of young new talent and the Minister should help to ensure that this invaluable human resource is not lost to the profession,” the SDLP elected representative added.

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Posted by on Apr 17 2012. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

2 Comments for “‘Teaching graduates must be given guaranteed first year in classroom’ – Bradley”

  1. damien

    Im not sure why there is an emphasis on solely helping teaching graduates, surely this attitude should apply to ALL graduates as it is not only teachers who are finding it difficult to get work, law graduates, engineering graduates, design graduates, everyone is stuggling to find work in heir chosen field.

  2. des

    Well said Damien. Maybe these graduates should have thought a little harder before choosing their under or post graduate courses. There are a proliferation of teachers simply because it is all too easy to access PGCE courses in England which are generanlly sought after picking up a fairly useless social sciences degree from one of the “universities” here in NI. Additionally, many of these teachers or rather PGCE graduates are qualified to teach subjects for which there is little or no demand, or those which are specialist and therefore have less students. How many of these unemployed ‘teachers’ looked at the market place before embarking on their courses. The STEM subjects all suffer from an undersupply of qualified teachers… but then it’s easier to get a degree in business studies than it is to get one in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths.
    Obviously the Labour Government’s policy of university places for all has greatly diluted the quality of graduates and just because you hold a certificate from one of the 500 or so poor – mediocre “universities” spread across these islands it doesn’t qualify let alone entitle you to teach.. for the sake of future generations go and do something you are good at!

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