Ulster Unionist Education Spokesperson, Danny Kinahan MLA, has called on John O’Dowd to explain why he has reduced the funding available for teacher severance from nearly £120m to just £20m for the next two years.

Danny Kinahan, who is also Deputy Chairman of the Education Committee at Stormont said;

“Last January Minister O’Dowd took great delight in announcing plans which would have entitled teachers taking redundancy to leave with a severance package of up to 90 weeks pay. The offer was up to three times more generous than the redundancy package which teachers are contractually entitled to and the Department had set aside £167m in order to meet the huge cost of the scheme over the next few years.

The Department claimed such a substantial package was necessary in order to reprofile the teaching staff across Northern Ireland as it would encourage teachers nearing retirement age to leave the profession earlier than they might have otherwise planned.

Yesterday’s decision, however, by the Minister to slash the money available to pay for this package for the next two years from £111.9m to just £20m, represents a humiliating U-turn from the Minister and would appear to reveal the initial announcement was ill thought out and wasn’t being effectively implemented by his Department .

Whilst I congratulate the Minister on deciding to reallocate this money to areas such as tackling his huge schools maintenance deficit and setting up a pool of money to help mitigate against the possible devastating impact of welfare reform, I do have to wonder why so much money was ever set aside for a severance scheme in the first place if the Department hadn’t clearly thought it through.

I would also have concerns as to how the Minister can slash so much money from a severance scheme and not expect it to have an impact on the numbers of staff leaving the system. The Department’s annual wage bill is approximately £800m so whilst the Minister may be temporarily reallocating money to more pressing matters, I would now call on him to come forward with new proposals which encourage enough teachers to take voluntary redundancy rather than being forced out of the system.”