Teacher Induction Year

Speech by David Ford delivered to Assembly, 19 June 2007 on Wed 20th Jun 2007

The timing of today's debate is welcome because it addresses a matter that is of significant importance to many young people in Northern Ireland and to their families.

As student teachers approach their graduations, too many of them face the future with no certainty of jobs ahead.

I can remember conducting interviews, as a member of a board of governors, a few years ago on 30 June for a post that was to be taken up on 1 September. More than 50 applicants - all girls, as it happened - applied for that junior primary school post. They were all leaving college and at that stage, apart from a small number who dropped out of the process, they had no prospect of employment in the profession for which they trained. Clearly, that is a significant issue that we need to address.

However, as when we considered the employment and training prospects of junior doctors a few weeks ago, we must also bear it in mind that we do not need a short-term, one-year fix but something that ensures a degree of continuity and provides some career progression. It is questionable whether the scheme currently operating in Scotland is necessarily what we need in Northern Ireland. Indeed, the Scottish scheme may not be applicable at all because the demographics are quite different here. I certainly do not wish to oppose the sentiments of the motion, but we must be extremely careful about the fine detail of what is proposed. If we want to ensure that we provide for those teachers who aspire to a career that lasts a considerable number of years - rather than until early retirement - we need something more than just the one-year fix that the motion is in danger of leading us to. Therefore, let us send a message to the Executive that we want the potential for such a scheme to be explored while recognising that the scheme that the McCrone Report laid out for Scotland may not be entirely relevant to Northern Ireland.

[Mr D Bradley: Does the Member accept that, if we introduced 10% planning, preparation and assessment time and two days' administration time for every teaching principal, newly qualified teachers would benefit from that? That would mean that we would provide not just a short-term fix but more employment on a longer-term basis for newly qualified teachers.]

Mr Ford: The Member makes, more eloquently than I hoped to do, a similar point to the one that I was about to make on the issue of class sizes. In discussing our priorities for education funding, it may well be that we conclude that additional posts will need to be created if we are seriously to address the problem of class sizes in some of our schools, especially those in which we are trying to mainstream pupils with special needs. The need to reduce class sizes might provide opportunities, as might the need to provide suitable relief for teaching principals in the way that the Member has highlighted.

Unless we provide such opportunities, however, we will need to face the issue that we currently train too many teachers. Indeed, despite the statistics that Mr Basil McCrea quoted that show a reduction in the number of people being trained, an increasing proportion of the students still do not have long-term employment at the end of their course. We need to ensure that we go beyond the one-year, short-term arrangement that is proposed and consider the details of the issue. It is rather sad that, as I understand it, those who are training for teaching posts in Stranmillis University College and St Mary's University College are encouraged to develop other skills because of the threat that they might not secure a job in teaching. We need to be rather more careful than the motion suggests that any proposed scheme should suit the needs of Northern Ireland rather than be based too closely on the Scottish one.

We also need to ensure that we have the money to deliver. If we do not have the money to deliver reductions in class sizes, we will not be able to go down that route. That prompts the question that other Members have raised about the spare capacity of 50,000 school places. There is an urgent need to rationalise the school estate to ensure that money goes to employing teachers and providing for the needs of pupils rather than to main­taining buildings and bureaucrats. I suspect that the Minister of Finance and Personnel, who is the deputy leader of the party to which the proposer of the motion belongs, will be grateful for the Sinn Féin amendment because, as Mr Butler highlighted, it would be dangerous to adopt the proposal without ensuring that matters have been fully costed.

We also need to ensure that, overall, there is a balance in the teaching profession. We have heard talk of teachers leaving early because of stress. The reality is that an apparently ever increasing number of teachers do not continue in work until the normal retirement age because of the difficulties that they experience. The danger is that we could end up with a scheme that artificially gives jobs to young teachers at the expense of mature teachers. That issue needs to be addressed.