Teaching in the Republic

[davey]

imagine an irishman being required to speak irish.god forbid

Whether we like it or not, Irish is a dying language. Indeed all efforts to resurrect it since Independence have failed - and will continue to do so. This is the reason why I feel the qualification stipulation is ridiculous. Why deny opportunity to talented people all over the world? I would accept that all people working in Ireland should have a cursory knowledge of Irish - if only for reasons of cultural integration. However the SCG exam is far from cursory and requires an in depth knowledge of the language. You have to pass a stringent oral exam - probably the only time you'll have a conversation in Irish in your working life. Of course Irish should be taught in Primary schools, but it should be done by specialist teachers.In the same way that other languages are taught in Primary school.

[Aberdonian Stu]

I don't claim Irish is alive and well but it has gone from being on life-support to being able to feed itself and walk freely, although it remains limited easily digestable food and needs help crossing the road.

The language is growing just very slowly. The stats of people LEARNING irish (not just punter joe who knows his cupla focal) and being educated through it continue to rise and demand for irish language education has never been higher in the history of the state.

So to say it's dying is unfair. Is it endangered? yes but so are 99% or the world's languages and dialects.

[Lionel Ritchie]

Herself is a fully qualified secondary school teacher with additional letters out the door and is still finding it extremely difficult to find work in the secondary system here unless you're willing to work/live in the Dublin area -which we are not.

I know a lot of graduates from the primary sector are finding it difficult to get work too ...and yes there is a dearth of male graduates in that sector.

As for some of the speculation on teachers holidays here -there's some fanciful stuff going on. BTW -I am NOT a teacher myself though I have taught part-time/resource teacher (art and music ..piece of p1ss compared to real teaching) . I'm a nine to five man who earns about the same (probably 10% less in truth) than what she'd have been on and I wouldn't swap with her.

1 week off in October.

Sometimes. Sometimes a long weekend just.

3 weeks at Christmas.

Pure fantasy. schools tend to finish the friday before Christmas and return on January 7th. Giving an earliest finish date of Dec 20th. Christmas hols are never more than a fortnight.

1 week in February.

No way. Possibly a monday and tuesday for parent teacher meetings -that's it.

2 weeks at Easter,

finish on ash wednesday and are back the following monday week -that's 7 days.

3 months from end of May to start of September.

Absolute outside 2 months in the summer. Exams have to be supervised for the whole of June. If you decide not to do any in-service training in a given summer -yeah you'll get two months pretty much -about 6 weeks otherwise.

Beyond that I'll concede that their holidays are obviously still longer than ours in the private sector -but that's down to the fact they work with kids and also the fact that it's a damn stressful job. I know for example nurses have it extremely bad too and deserve about the same holidays teachers get and to be honest if we payed teachers and nurses twice what teachers are on -I still dunno if they'd be getting their worth.

I guess unless you've shared a home with one ( a teacher) you don't get to see it -but -as well as all the regular stuff you'd expect like being overcrowded, under-resourced, abused etc... we've been through the lot (I'm talking intimidation by pupils AND their pondlife parents, harassment, vandalism to homes vehicles etc, phone numbers and addresses needing changed...the works) and she's only teaching since the late 90's.


But back to our Scottish based couple. I'd skip it and go to the continent. There was a time I'd have advised the middle east (Abu Dhabbi, Jordan) as a mate of mine went there for two years and came home and bought a house. Note I didn't say "got a mortgage". He bought a house ...no debts, no loans.

But the world has turned a bit in the short few years since.