At 8.40am, as the bell rang in one south Dublin secondary school last month, the announcement was brief: the higher-level physics teacher was absent, no substitute had been found, and 24 sixth year students would be split between two other classes already operating at capacity.

The same pattern has been repeated across the country this year – not as a rare emergency, but as routine.

And the effects of the shortage are not confined to exam years. Long before the pressure of the Leaving Certificate begins, pupils are already encountering gaps that shape what – and how well – they learn.

Sarah, a third-year student in Co Offaly, saw it unfold in her business studies class when her regular teacher was replaced. Lessons that once moved briskly slowed to a crawl as the young teacher covering the subject struggled to maintain order.

‘We barely got anything done and we were way behind the other classes,’ she says. ‘She was overwhelmed. Very young and very nice – maybe too nice. She never really took control of the classroom, and when she did, everybody just went dead. There was no life in it.’

Sarah was one of the stronger students in the class.

‘I wanted to learn properly,’ she says. ‘The stress just wasn’t worth it in the end, which was a shame because it had been one of my best subjects.’

One afternoon, rather than engage with a lesson that had stopped engaging her, she wrote a poem in her copybook – not as a protest but as a way of recording what the class had become (see right).

When Sarah later proposed that her school introduce Politics and Society as a Leaving Certificate subject, the answer was no. Staffing constraints made it impossible – a decision she saw not as a refusal, but as a symptom of a system quietly narrowing students’ options long before they ever reach sixth year.

By the time pupils do arrive in their final exam year, those gaps have often become entrenched.

Jennifer, a sixth-year student in a Dublin school, lost weeks of computer science tuition when her teacher went on leave shortly before a project worth 30 per cent of the final grade was due. No qualified replacement arrived.

‘A lot of the class didn’t finish the course properly or fully understand it,’ she says. ‘People aren’t achieving their potential.’

The same thing happened in home economics. To stay on track, she now travels 50 minutes each way for grinds twice a week, at a cost of €60 to €100 per hour.

‘If you can afford grinds, you’re better off,’ she says. ‘If you can’t, you fall behind. Education needs to be more equal. The standard of teaching varies hugely from school to school and even teacher to teacher, which drives the need for grinds. Some schools have better access to teachers than others.’

What began as a staffing gap has become a significant extra cost for her family – evenings and weekends reorganised around travel and fees that many households simply cannot stretch to cover.

David, an autistic sixth year student also in Dublin, faced a different but equally frustrating problem.

‘There isn’t one clear book or guide everyone follows,’ he says. ‘It’s mostly topics and advice online, and it can be really stressful trying to work out what you’re actually meant to know.’

Many of his friends have had to pay for extra classes because their schools could not properly provide certain subjects.

‘If your school can’t properly provide a subject, it feels like you’re expected to figure it out yourself or pay for it,’ he says. ‘The system definitely isn’t equal.’

A March 2026 Teachers’ Union of Ireland survey found that almost one in five schools had been forced to drop at least one subject entirely, while three-quarters of schools advertising positions in the previous six months received no applications.

School leaders say the official framing does not reflect what is happening in classrooms, pointing to repeated gaps in substitute cover, difficulty filling specialist subjects and timetables reshaped mid-year to keep schools running.

A principal at a large post-primary school in south county Dublin, who asked to remain anonymous, describes a system in which leaders are forced to ‘cover classes, merge groups and try to keep routines stable for children’ while supporting staff already stretched to their limits.

In her experience, Department of Education policies on statutory and discretionary leave are compounding the problem.

‘The difficulty does not lie with the leave itself,’ she explains. ‘It is rather the fact that there are a number of leave entitlements for which the department does not grant substitute cover.’

In practice, she says, this leaves schools with little option but to split classes or redeploy special education teachers into mainstream classrooms.

‘Inevitably,’ she adds, ‘it is those students with the greatest needs who are most adversely impacted.’

She says the problem is intensified by the structure of substitute contracts, often paid less favourably than fixed-term posts. Even when positions are filled, many substitutes move on quickly to more secure roles, leaving principals in a cycle of repeated emergency recruitment.

Maureen, a post-primary teacher working in a secondary school in Dublin, describes a system operating in a near-permanent state of crisis, where shortages are no longer temporary disruptions but a defining feature of daily school life.

‘We have unfilled posts from teachers on maternity leave and staff moving to other schools, and at this point every qualified teacher has gone well beyond their required substitute hours,’ she says. ‘We also have two unqualified staff members teaching full-time. That’s not because anybody thinks it’s acceptable, it’s because there is no other option.’

Over the past two years, subject provision has steadily collapsed.

‘We had no Leaving Certificate geography for two years running,’ she says. ‘Biology is now our only Leaving Cert science option. We’ve lost engineering, German and home economics altogether.’

At junior cycle, choices have narrowed further.

‘We’ve been forced to make art mandatory,’ she says. ‘That’s not an educational decision, it’s desperation.’

In some cases, pupils have effectively gone without teaching altogether. ‘We had a maths class go their entire first year without a teacher,’ she says. ‘That’s an enormous amount of lost learning, and there’s no magic fix for it later.’

When staff are absent and no substitute is available, the consequences escalate quickly.

‘In extreme cases, classes have been cancelled and students sent home early,’ she says.

‘To stop that happening, teachers put themselves under huge pressure to take extra classes, which means less planning, less correcting and less support for their own students.’

The impact on the most vulnerable is, in her view, the hardest part to bear.

‘I feel we are failing our students in a way that doesn’t happen in less disadvantaged areas,’ she says. ‘Students’ needs are not being met academically, emotionally or behaviourally.

‘We work in an extremely disadvantaged area, and that compounds everything. When education fails here, prospects narrow very fast. Students disengage. Some drop out entirely.’

For Maureen herself, the strain is constant.

‘I live in a state of low-level worry about my students,’ she says. ‘The workload is heavy, but the emotional weight is heavier. Teachers are highly qualified – they hold masters degrees and could be making far more money elsewhere. We do it as a vocation for the most part.

‘I love my job, but I often think about whether I can afford to keep doing it.’

She is now considering leaving the country.

‘I don’t want to,’ she says. ‘I’ll miss my students terribly. But if I want to buy a house, I may have no choice. I teach in one of the most disadvantaged areas of Dublin, and I can’t afford to live anywhere near it.

‘That tells you everything about where the system is.’

With exams approaching, parents are increasingly stepping into roles as tutors, organisers and emotional supports their schools can no longer sustain.

Siobhán Harvey, national parenting lead at the ISPCC, hears the downstream effects directly from families – and says the damage begins long before exam season.

‘Children complain of tummy aches or not feeling well as a way of expressing anxiety about going to school,’ she says.

‘Essentially, they are looking for excuses not to attend.’

For older students, the pressure can escalate further.

‘Parents have shared experiences of their children being diagnosed with social anxiety in secondary school, struggling emotionally, not wanting to attend and feeling that their needs were not being adequately met by the school,’ she says.

The disruption of repeated teacher changes, she says, cuts students deeper than many parents realise.

‘When a subject they enjoy is suddenly dropped or taught inconsistently, it can be very destabilising,’ she says.

Transitions between different teachers and classrooms are particularly hard on students who experience sensory difficulties.

‘For most children, continuity and the ability to build a relationship with their teacher is very important for focus and learning,’ she says.

Harvey says repeated disruption erodes children’s sense of safety, making it harder to focus, learn and cope.

For those preparing for the Leaving Certificate, the anxiety is sharper still.

‘We are hearing high levels of pressure and stress around exams – both from school and home expectations,’ she says. ‘Many young people feel overloaded, and inconsistency in teaching compounds the sense that they are not being adequately prepared.’

The Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI), which represents more than 18,000 post-primary teachers, says the staffing crisis is already leaving a lasting mark on students.

‘The enormous price being paid by children who are consistently in classrooms with no qualified teacher available to teach them will leave a long and bitter legacy,’ says ASTI general secretary Kieran Christie.

‘Teaching in Ireland needs to be made more attractive if we are to stabilise supply.’

The Department of Education says the overall picture is more stable than school-level accounts suggest, pointing to national staffing data rather than individual experiences. It says there are now more than 75,000 teachers employed across the system – including 34,600 at post-primary level – with teaching posts growing faster than pupil numbers in recent years.

Budget 2026 provided a further 1,042 teaching posts, including 860 in special education, while payroll figures show more than 97 per cent of positions are filled at any given time. Ireland’s teacher attrition rate remains among the lowest in the OECD.

School leaders and families, however, say these figures do not reflect day-to-day realities in classrooms, where substitute cover remains difficult to secure and timetables are frequently reshaped mid-year.

Subjects such as physics, home economics, technical graphics and higher level maths continue to be particularly hard to staff, while special education teachers are still being redeployed to cover mainstream classes when gaps arise.

Department figures indicate more than 1,000 unfilled or out-of-field post-primary posts, particularly in Irish, maths and home economics. It also says unregistered personnel are used only as a last resort for short-term cover, accounting for around 1 per cent of instructional days.

In total, 13,540 individuals are classified as unqualified – meaning not fully registered with the Teaching Council for the role or subject taught – reflecting continued pressure on schools to fill gaps where qualified teachers cannot be found.

Despite official assurances, schools say the pressure remains visible on the ground, with some posts attracting few applicants and others filled only on a temporary or stop-gap basis.

Sarah no longer has business studies. Jennifer’s evenings are spent travelling to grinds. David is still piecing together revision for subjects his school cannot fully deliver. Each is preparing for the same exams in a system that, on paper, has never employed more teachers – yet still leaves gaps in practice.

The bell will ring again on Monday at 8.40am. For many sixth years it will be another day of catching up, with the cost of lost time and extra support falling on families rather than the system meant to prevent it.

For some, that quiet accumulation of disadvantage will shape not just their Leaving Cert results, but the choices available long after the last exam paper has been turned over.

Nobody's Listening by Sarah from Offaly

He fiddles with his pen,

She stares blankly ahead,

Yawns, eyes rubbed, hands on their heads,

He whispers to his classmate,

She doodles and daydreams,

Looks thrown across the room

A silent sort of speech

Sitting at the top

Lecturing and lecturing

Words fly about

Nobody's listening

Dead eyes, tired Beyond means,

Yawns, eyes rubber, hands on their heads

Legs shaking with a need for movement

Hearts aching with a yearning for purpose

Side-long looks,

Smiles and giggles

"What's wrong with ye?!"

"Why aren't you listening?"

Fidgeting, daydreaming,

Zoning out,

Life in a classroom

Where curiosity dries up like a drought

He sips his water

Watching out the window

Rules dictate life

Just keep your head low

She texts her friend

Phone beneath the desk,

The teacher says something

About another test?

Words are read

Repeated aloud

A question is asked

Not a word nor sound

"Why aren't you listening?"

Words mumur quickly,

Answers are spoon-fed

A false sense of victory

Those dead eyes stare ahead,

The eyes of a student,

A student who's

Been broken, torn down and beaten

They'll be built back up though,

Like robots for society

Curiosity? Gone,

No thirst for learning

She daydreams,

He fidgets,

She whispers to her friend,

The teacher talks on

Will there ever be an end?

Those dead eyes staring,

Devoid of all feeling,

Words fly about,

Nobody's listening.