And one day children, you can be unqualified at anything you like!
A bridge too frail; a link too tenuous
Work experience for the unemployed – Irish style – it’s called JobBridge – your bridge from unemployment to, well, some rough-and-ready pit stop that gives you €50 on top of your social welfare payment to do a full week’s work that someone else would get a full week’s pay for.
There are so many ways of finding employment in education these days. If you are a qualified, unemployed teacher, here’s one way you can break in. Get a JobBridge placement as a cleaner or a caretaker in an Irish school. Mind you, there could be an unqualified teacher in the school, but sure you can give them a root out when you are not scratching your head and wondering why this might be as you sweep the corridors of Irish education. This will give you some backdoor experience. It will look good on your CV along with deft handling of cleaning equipment.
According to the ASTI website, “An unqualified casual part-time teacher is a person who is not qualified as a teacher but is appointed where there is an occasional or non-regular need for a teacher.” What is a ‘non-regular’ need for a teacher? I wonder if there is ever “an occasional or non-regular need” for a doctor, a or an engineer? What if your journey to school takes you across a bridge that was not designed by a qualified civil engineer and that bridge collapses? How does the company explain that it had a ‘non-regular need’ for a civil engineer? Furthermore, what does an “unqualified teacher mean”? I don’t think I have ever consulted an unqualified doctor or sought the advice of an unqualified solicitor. You are a teacher, a doctor, an engineer, or you are not. It’s a 1/0 thing; an on/off switch. I don’t consider myself to be an ‘unqualified astronaut’ or an unqualified ‘hairdresser’. I can be an ‘unqualified’ anything I like. But that shouldn’t mean I can be employed as an ‘unqualified’ anything I like and be paid the bizarrely named ‘unqualified rate’, €40.85 per hour in the case of ‘unqualified teachers’.
The INTO website says, “Where an employer can satisfactorily demonstrate that every reasonable effort has been made to recruit an appropriately qualified and registered teacher, an unqualified and/or unregistered person may be recruited pending the recruitment of an appropriately qualified and registered teacher and this provision must be inserted in the employment contract.” This can only mean that there are no qualified teachers looking for work in Ireland. Where have they all gone?
I wonder if this recruitment practice is carried out in hospitals. If a hospital can’t find a fully qualified doctor, does it employ an unqualified one and pay them an unqualified rate until it finds a qualified one? Would an airline do this if there was a shortage of pilots?
The JobBridge website says, the scheme will “give people a real opportunity to gain valuable experience to bridge the gap between study and the beginning of their working lives.” That’s if the unqualified pilots survive, the unqualified doctors don’t kill all of their patients, and unqualified civil engineers don’t kill perhaps thousands of people.
Hmmm, I wonder what the NASA rate for unqualified astronauts is? Actually no, I think I would like to be an unqualified politician…….
Copyright Berni Dwan 2014
Work experience for the unemployed – Irish style – it’s called JobBridge – your bridge from unemployment to, well, some rough-and-ready pit stop that gives you €50 on top of your social welfare payment to do a full week’s work that someone else would get a full week’s pay for.
There are so many ways of finding employment in education these days. If you are a qualified, unemployed teacher, here’s one way you can break in. Get a JobBridge placement as a cleaner or a caretaker in an Irish school. Mind you, there could be an unqualified teacher in the school, but sure you can give them a root out when you are not scratching your head and wondering why this might be as you sweep the corridors of Irish education. This will give you some backdoor experience. It will look good on your CV along with deft handling of cleaning equipment.
According to the ASTI website, “An unqualified casual part-time teacher is a person who is not qualified as a teacher but is appointed where there is an occasional or non-regular need for a teacher.” What is a ‘non-regular’ need for a teacher? I wonder if there is ever “an occasional or non-regular need” for a doctor, a or an engineer? What if your journey to school takes you across a bridge that was not designed by a qualified civil engineer and that bridge collapses? How does the company explain that it had a ‘non-regular need’ for a civil engineer? Furthermore, what does an “unqualified teacher mean”? I don’t think I have ever consulted an unqualified doctor or sought the advice of an unqualified solicitor. You are a teacher, a doctor, an engineer, or you are not. It’s a 1/0 thing; an on/off switch. I don’t consider myself to be an ‘unqualified astronaut’ or an unqualified ‘hairdresser’. I can be an ‘unqualified’ anything I like. But that shouldn’t mean I can be employed as an ‘unqualified’ anything I like and be paid the bizarrely named ‘unqualified rate’, €40.85 per hour in the case of ‘unqualified teachers’.
The INTO website says, “Where an employer can satisfactorily demonstrate that every reasonable effort has been made to recruit an appropriately qualified and registered teacher, an unqualified and/or unregistered person may be recruited pending the recruitment of an appropriately qualified and registered teacher and this provision must be inserted in the employment contract.” This can only mean that there are no qualified teachers looking for work in Ireland. Where have they all gone?
I wonder if this recruitment practice is carried out in hospitals. If a hospital can’t find a fully qualified doctor, does it employ an unqualified one and pay them an unqualified rate until it finds a qualified one? Would an airline do this if there was a shortage of pilots?
The JobBridge website says, the scheme will “give people a real opportunity to gain valuable experience to bridge the gap between study and the beginning of their working lives.” That’s if the unqualified pilots survive, the unqualified doctors don’t kill all of their patients, and unqualified civil engineers don’t kill perhaps thousands of people.
Hmmm, I wonder what the NASA rate for unqualified astronauts is? Actually no, I think I would like to be an unqualified politician…….
Copyright Berni Dwan 2014
