A Cork secondary school principal says schools are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit teachers for certain subjects.
Aaron Wolfe from Coláiste Éamonn Rís in the city says the government need to do more to make teaching an attractive profession for young people.
The ASTI and TUI are warning that pay and contracts need to be overhauled to reverse the recruitment and retention crisis in teaching.
A recent report from the Teachers Union of Ireland found that over 90 per cent of schools surveyed had difficulties recruiting teachers in the past six months.
Speaking to RedFM News, principal of Coláiste Éamonn Rís Aaron Wolfe outlines how an overhaul of contracts could help:
"It's very difficult to fill vacancies. And we have four vacancies at the moment that we're struggling to fill their match vacancies, but there are not math teachers out there. And people that have graduated Matt off and now go into the sciences because teaching is not an attractive career. You cannot pay your rent on only a 10 hour contract. So you have a problem that some subjects, you cannot fill some subjects, so Matt's Irish, Spanish on economics, there are lots of vacancies in those subjects. But then there's a lot of graduates with history, geography, it's not so difficult to find teachers in those subjects. And the workload of teaching has to be looked at, you know, it has changed hugely the demands placed on teachers is massive, far greater than it ever was in the past."
