'Bullied' Teachers Costing £Millions In Sick Leave

Budget-busting levels of absenteeism among teaching staff - possibly caused by 'bullying' involving pupils - are costing Northern Ireland's schools more than £50 million.

This is the amount that has been spent covering for teachers absent from the classroom through sickness.

The startling figure - which comes from paying substitute teachers on varying rates of pay, depending on experience - was revealed in a NI Assembly question by Tom Elliott, MLA for Fermanagh and South Tyrone,

He is now keen to find out the "underlying reasons" for the sickness levels.

Stating that he wondered whether "our teachers are facing more difficulties" in terms of stress induced by " bullying by pupils", Mr Elliott said he confirmed he would be making "further inquiries to see what the main issues are here".

By coincidence, news has also just emerged that Northern Ireland has now a specialised website dedicated to alleviating bullying among children, with the obvious inference that such a resource could be equally useful for stressed-out teaching staff.

In each of the last three years for which figures are available, teachers have taken up to two weeks' annual sick leave on average, costing the NI Department of Education as much as £51.5 million a year.

He has discovered that, in 2004-05 alone, the average sick leave was just under eight days per teacher.

The following year it was just under 10 days per teacher (two weeks), dropping to nine days per teacher in 2006-07.

In response, the NI Education Minister Caitriona Ruane said that at the time of answering Mr Elliott's query, 2,173 teachers were on sick leave, covering absences from one day to as much as a full month.

She also said that sickness levels were found to be highest among the Catholic Maintained Sector with just over 71,215 sick days recorded for the last academic year – an average of almost 11 days per teacher.

However, within the Controlled Sector things weren't a lot better, there were a total of 60,348 days taken off sick by teachers.

A spokesman from the North Eastern Education and Library Board said that its average payment was 158 per day. Mr Elliott said he had been prompted to ask the Assembly question after " talking with boards of governors about the general difficulties they face coping with teachers being off sick".

A spokesman for the Department of Education said it was "aware of the level of sick absence in the teaching profession and has been working closely with the employing authorities in an effort to reduce these levels".

(BMcC/JM)