Principal says we must retain teachers as 231 Cork posts go unfilled

A recent survey has shown there were more than 231 unfilled teaching posts in Cork as of March 2025.

A Cork principal has said the Government needs to do more to train and retain teachers, as the children are the ones suffering.

Data showing 2.9% of primary teacher and 2.3% of secondary teacher jobs were not filled in March of last year was provided to Fianna Fáil TD for Cork North West Aindrias Moynihan in response to a parliamentary question.

Education minister Helen McEntee said: “Like many sectors, recruitment challenges exist in the education sector — especially in urban areas.

“While most teaching positions are filled, some schools face significant recruitment challenges.

“A recent analysis of the teacher payroll shows that, as of March 2025, there were 8,551.4 teachers employed across primary and post-primary schools in Co Cork, out of an allocation of 8,782.8 full time equivalents.

“This resulted in 231.4 unused allocated posts during the 2024/25 school year, with 137.7 unused allocated posts in primary and 93.8 unused allocated posts in post-primary.”

Ms McEntee added that the Government has implemented several measures to address supply issues leading to an increase of 20% in initial teacher education graduates (student teachers) between 2018 and 2023, and a 30% increase in the number registered with the Teaching Council since 2017.

Mr Moynihan told The Echo: “The figures on the posts that were unfilled didn’t shock me, I thought it might even be higher, but it’s a lot of posts unfilled. You have to wonder what’s going on in a classroom if there isn’t a qualified teacher available.”

He said that measures introduced by previous education minister Normal Foley “seem to have helped somewhat, but there’s ground to be made up there. It’s hugely important that schools will be able to recruit, that posts will be filled — we don’t want a situation where children are missing out.”

In terms of addressing the issue, he said: 

“It’s not one size fits all, there are a range of different measures that would help. The cost of housing has to be a pressure as well, particularly for people living in cities.”

Siobhán Buckley, principal of Millstreet Presentation NS and member of the Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO) executive, said teacher supply was a huge issue: “It’s very challenging for principals trying to get substitutes.

“Often they have no choice but to put a learning support teacher into a mainstream class, and it’s the students with the most need who miss out. If that can’t be done, sometimes unqualified teachers need to be employed.

“What I can’t understand is the Government knows the birth rate, they know how many teachers will be needed, yet they’re not increasing places in training colleges by enough or incentivising young students to go into teaching.”

She added: “Let’s make the profession more attractive for teachers coming home from abroad, let whatever service they had in Australia count for incremental credit when they come home.”

She added that current regulations, that retired teachers can only do a certain amount of substitute teaching before it interferes with their pension, could be changed.

She also said that making it more accessible to go into teaching in Ireland if you had trained abroad would help.

She said: “We want to see a reduction in pupil teacher ratio, we have the highest ratio in Europe, but that will only aggravate the teacher supply issues further — children are the biggest losers in all this.”

It comes as The Echo revealed last week that 176, or 6.6%, of primary school classes in Cork have more than 30 pupils — which is above the national average.