Many secondary school teachers unqualified in the subject they teach

Many Irish teachers are teaching classes in subjects like civic, social and political education (CSPE) and computer studies, despite the fact that they do not have the formal qualifications to teach these subjects. According to a new study of teachers at 70 schools conducted as part of a Teaching Council assessment of staffing needs, 8015 teachers are qualified in English, with 6,628 qualified history teachers, 5,443 maths teachers and 5,426 geography teachers.

Only 824 teachers were qualified to teach CSPE and there were only 578 qualified computer studies teachers. Meanwhile a total of 3,437 teachers were qualified to teach RE.

In the 70 schools surveyed, 2,807 teachers were deployed to cover 5,560 subjects, showing that teachers are teaching more than one subject.