EDUCATION

.............The Kildare Place Society began formal teacher training in Ireland in 1814 for males, (1824 for females), and trained 2,500 teachers between 1814 and 1831.  On the successful completion of the training programme of 7-8 weeks, three categories of certificate were granted, 'competent', 'fully competent', and 'having had an opportunity of becoming acquainted with the system.'  Trainee teachers were aged between 16 and 50.  A training college for male national teachers was opened in Marlborough Street, Dublin, in 1838 and one for women in 1842.  These were known as Normal Establishments.  Model schools were also set up, where candidate teachers were trained by laymen, without supervision by the church authorities.  The curriculum in girls' model schools was centered on the domestic sphere with needlework as the core subject.  Needlework was upgraded in 1846 to include domestic economy, simple cookery, laundry and household management.  The training course lasted for six months.  After 1849, these colleges received many high-achieving pupils from the model schools.  Some trainee teachers were former monitor pupils selected by inspectors in the ordinary national schools.

The monitor system is of great interest.  Monitors were 'pupils who for some period each day helped with the teaching.'  A junior monitor, aged 11, was appointed for three years.  At the end of that period, if considered satisfactory, he/she could become a senior monitor and serve for a further period of four years.  At the end of 1851, there were eight paid male and four female monitors in each district.  On reaching 18, a monitor might apply for an appointment as a pupil teacher in a district model school for a period of two years...............

..........The need for teacher training was great.  Even national schools employed some untrained teachers.  Several schools were closed at times, because of the scarcity of trained teachers, particularly in the early years of the national system.  In time, the Board exerted pressure on teachers to obtain teaching qualifications within a specified period.  In July 1855 in Boula National School, Miss E. CLARKE, had been employed as a teacher for seven years.  The manager wished to retain her services, contrary to the Commissioners' order of dismissal, dated 18 July 1855, which the Commissioners refused to rescind, as 'she has been above seven years in the Board's service without obtaining classification, a fact in itself sufficient to prove her utter incompetence.'  On obtaining classification, one still had to take examinations to retain one's status.  Failure to pass these might constitute grounds for dismissal.  Miss Honoria LYONS, who taught at Kilcooley Female National School, Roll No. 6561 was dismissed for insufficient answering in the general examinations in Ballinasloe in 1857...

In 1861 the average pay of the national schoolteacher was about one-third that of teachers in England.

Many teachers were so poor that they were compelled to accept relief during the Great Famine…some who could afford the fare emigrated to the USA. Public opinion did not support increases in teachers' salaries. Public disquiet about

proposed salary increases voiced: "Teachers should remain prizes for the poor, not for the rich. Teachers should not be made fine gentlemen (or ladies), raised to an eminence so High as to dissipate affinity between them and the parents of their pupils”. Despite poor pay and conditions, teaching posts were eagerly sought.

Transcribed by Mimi Stevens