Teachers working part-time or on fixed-term contracts will have more job security under recommendations made by an expert group yesterday. Minister for Education Jan O’Sullivan has said that teachers working part-time or on fixed-term contracts will have more job security from the beginning of the 2015 school year. The Minister was commenting on the publication of the report of the Expert Group on fixed-term and part-time employment in teaching which was chaired by Peter Ward, SC.

At present, approximately 35% of teachers in the post-primary sector are on a fixed-term or part-time contract. In the primary sector the figure is approximately one in ten.

The Expert Group has recommended that the qualification period for the granting of a ‘Contract of Indefinite Duration’ (CID), be reduced from ‘a period of continuous employment in excess of three years’ to that of ‘a period of continuous employment in excess of two years’.

The Expert Group also recommends that once a teacher has completed his or her first year of fixed-term employment in a school and the hours are available for that post for the following year, that position should be automatically re-advertised by the school and a new recruitment process undertaken for the filling of the post for the second year. The full list of recommendations can be viewed here.

The Minister pointed out that the implementation of this report is a key plank of the Haddington Road Agreement and has stated that she looks forward to putting in place arrangements to implement the report with effect from September 2015, following early engagement with the education partners. She stated that “This reform will represent a significant improvement in the job security and stability of employment for existing and future young teachers. Ultimately, this will benefit not only individual teachers, but our education system as a whole."

In a separate story today, new data shows that schools are using the JobBridge scheme to fill positions with figures from the Department of Social Protection showing that 182 people have taken up positions in the education sector over the past month which is equivalent to 18% of all JobBridge placements for the period. A further 110 positions are currently advertised with 43 schools advertising for 56 Special Needs Assistants. All these posts, with one exception, are for primary education.

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