The INTO has reported that the Education Amendment Act 2012 has been passed by the Oireachtas and signed by the President. As well as a number of other issues, the Act allows the DES and Teaching Council to exchange data in order to compile lists of registered and unregistered teachers. It also paves the way for the Minister for Education and Skills to commence Section 30 of the Teaching Council Act.
This section will require everyone in publicly funded teaching posts to be registered with the Teaching Council in order to be paid from the Exchequer. It is now expected that Section 30 will be brought into force during the course of the next school term. Any teacher who is not registered with the Teaching Council at that point will have their salary stopped (as it will be unlawful for the DES to pay an unregistered person) and will not be paid from State funds until they are registered with the Teaching Council. It also means that teachers who have their pay stopped will not be eligible for arrears of pay after they do become registered.
The Teaching Council is urging teachers who are not registered to apply for registration as soon as possible in order to allow sufficient time for the processing of applications, including Garda Vetting, prior to the commencement of Section 30, to avoid any loss of salary.
Will teachers lose their pay if their registration isn’t processed in time for September or will they be back-paid, I wonder?
What a joke! If such rules are going to be brought into place stipulations must allow for the timely registration of teachers, as opposed to the incompetent team who are currently registering teachers. A lot of delays are due to incompetence in the current system and qualified teachers MUST NOT be punished for this.
I presume that the Teaching Council would argue that this issue has been flagged for long enough and that teachers have been given plenty of notice to make sure that they were registered. However, I hope that registration NQTs will be expedited as they could only register after they were finished college and it wouldn’t be fair if they were not to receive pay just because they weren’t registered in time through no fault of their own.
Teachers were scared into registering years ago for fear of pay being docked, yet the Act is only being implemented now. So the five years i’ve been registered, at a cost of €95 a year, total €475, Has that money been wasted? I do not see the TC as having any value for the last five years.
I agree!!! €475 euro would be a nice trip on a plane somewhere wouldn’t it ..