A new scheme allowing post-primary schools to share teachers will be introduced in September.
Currently, there are teacher shortages in subject areas such as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), modern languages, Irish, and home economics.
Announcing the Teacher Sharing Scheme today, Education and Skills Minister, Joe McHugh, said the scheme, to be introduced in the 2019/20 school year, would be reviewed after the first year of operation.
The initiative is one of 22 contained in the department’s Teacher Supply Action Plan, published last November.
The scheme will allow two schools to work together to recruit a teacher and employ them for more hours than if they were teaching in just one school.
Mr Mchugh said the scheme would allow a teacher to teach as many hours as possible in a high-demand subject.
“I am confident that it will make a difference and help to ease the difficulties that some schools have experienced in sourcing teachers of high-priority subjects,” said the minister.
Mr McHugh said school management bodies and teacher unions had shown great commitment and co-operation in agreeing to innovative solutions, like the Teacher Sharing Scheme.
The implementation of the Action Plan is led by the Teacher Supply Steering group, chaired by the secretary general of the department, Seán Ó Foghlú.
Options will be explored this year on recruiting teachers currently employed in other jurisdictions and developing an online teacher recruitment portal.
The Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI), said while the initiatives were welcome, there was a lack of serious Government intent to eradicate unequal pay.
The Teachers’ Union of Ireland has described the plan as a list of “sticking plaster” measures that ignored the root causes behind the recruitment and retention crisis in schools.
It wants the process of pay equalisation to be accelerated for teachers who started working since 2011, to make teaching attractive again.