PPLI Audit of Foreign Languages - Flipbook - Page 66
6 Teachers entering the system
In relation to teacher supply a separate piece of research was conducted. All HEIs were asked to provide numbers
of graduates in second level teacher education programmes. Universities did not want their exact figures published
hence a summary is provided here which incorporates the data from all the universities rather than from individual
ones.
Numbers of teaching graduates from 2012 to 2018
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
2012
2013
French
2014
2015
2016
German
Spanish
Chinese
Japanese
2017
2018
Italian
Figure 49: Numbers of language teacher graduates from 2012-2018
In 2015 the one year PDE (Professional Diploma in Education) was changed to a two year PME (Professional Master
of Education), this meant that some universities had no graduates in 2015. The Teaching Council registration
numbers do not reflect this drop in numbers, they registered an increase in all modern language teachers. Based on
the numbers received from HEIs for this audit, numbers for newly graduated French teachers decreased by two
thirds between 2014 and 2015, during that same period numbers for German teachers dropped by over half and
numbers for Spanish teachers dropped by two thirds. As can be seen from the graph numbers for German and Italian
peaked in 2013 and numbers for French and Spanish peaked in 2014. Numbers for Italian and Japanese teachers are
very low, but stable.
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Audit of Foreign Languages Provision in Post-Primary Schools 2017
Post-Primary Languages Initiative February 2017 Draft Report