Knowledge and experience to be lost from schools
A HUGE wealth of knowledge and experience is being lost from Louth's secondary schools as teachers avail of the February 29 deadline for public servants to retire and retain pension benefits agreed under the Croke Park agreement.
ASTI spokeswoman Elaine Devlin says that while a relatively small number of secondary teachers are due to retire in Louth at the end of the month it marks the end of a process which has seen 'a huge seepage of experienced teachers leave our schools over the last two or three years'.
' There has been a massive amount of retirements in recent years so in most schools there are only one or two leaving at the end of February,' she says.
While this will minimise the impact which it has on students, particularly those sitting the Junior and Leaving Cert examinations, the exodus of teachers is felt in other ways.
It has, she says, had the knock-on effect of lowering the age of teachers and the years of experience in the staff room.
' The eldest teachers in our school would now be in their early fifties whereas you used to have teachers in their sixties with 40 years of experience,' she notes.
' That's a huge loss of experience and knowledge for younger teachers to draw upon. There's no one there to mentor or offer advice to younger teachers.'
While she's delighted that there's no moratorium on recruitment in education, she says that new teachers need experienced teachers in schools to mentor them as they take up their new posts and that is no longer the case.
' Teachers with 40 years' experience know the game and they were a real resource for new teachers coming in.'
And while teachers once had the expectation of a full-time permanent job she said that is no longer the case and many of the posts are being offered by way of part time contract which means that teachers don't become part of the school community as much as they did in the past.
