Cork Life Centre loses eight teachers due to uncertainty over future

THE Cork Life Centre lost eight teachers over the summer, the director of the northside education facility has said.

“They took with them a wealth of knowledge and experience of our unique model of work,” the Life Centre’s director, Don O’Leary, told The Echo.

“We’re heartbroken to lose them, but they owe the Life Centre absolutely nothing, they have all done incredible work with and for our students, and they have to think about their own futures.” 

Mr O’Leary said the teachers, each of them having six or more years’ worth of experience of the centre’s ethos, had been forced to take on employment opportunities elsewhere because of the precarious nature of their employment in the centre, and because the Department of Education had done nothing to allay their fears for the future.

The Life Centre each year offers one-to-one tuition to 55 young people, aged between 12 and 18, who have not thrived in the mainstream education system.

The centre has, for several years, been in unresolved talks with the department over funding, and in recent months a departmental review of out-of-school education provision caused considerable unrest in the Life Centre.

Mr O’Leary described the review’s recommendations as “unworkable” and “serving only to further exclude children from education”.

He added that the recommendations, if implemented, would mean “the end of the Life Centre”.

“The Life Centre is the only education provider in the country working to the Servol model, which depends to a great degree on the building of relationships with young people, and this type of approach is not present in the review’s recommendations, which focus worryingly on short-term interventions,” he said.

Mr O’Leary said that when Education Minister Norma Foley had visited the centre in June, he had raised with her what he said were serious shortcomings in the data used to inform the conclusions of the departmental review, including inaccuracies underrepresenting the achievements of the centre’s students at Leaving Certificate level.

Another serious issue, he said, is that fully qualified teachers in the Life Centre are working what are known as co-operation hours and are being paid part-time rates by the department, without pension rights or access to incremental pay increases, and are forced to sign on for social protection payment out of term.

This was the reason, he said, that Life Centre staff often found themselves unable to secure mortgages, leaving some forced to purse more secure employment.

“During her visit, Minister Foley met parents, students and teachers, and she gave a commitment to looking at the payment of teachers in the centre registered with the teaching council, but despite that undertaking, the department has not followed through on the minister’s promise,” Mr O’Leary said.

Last week, responding to a Dáil question from Cork North Central Fianna Fáil TD Pádraig O’Sullivan, Minister Foley said she remained committed to honouring her agreement with the Life Centre, through the review of out-of-school education provision, the recommendations of which, she said, she intended now to implement.