TEACHERS TOOK MORE than 3,400 days of sick leave over the past two school years because of assaults that took place in the workplace.<\/p>\n
Figures from the Department of Education show that 1,724 days were lost in the 2024\/2025 school year because of attacks on teaching staff.<\/p>\n
A further 1,689 were logged in the 2025\/2026 school year up until the end of May with figures for June still unavailable.<\/p>\n
The department data showed that \u201cleave of absence following assault\u201d was far more prevalent among primary teachers.<\/p>\n
In primary schools, there were 3,267 days lost as a result of attacks on staff during the past two school years.<\/p>\n
That compared to just 146 at post-primary level, according to figures released under Freedom of Information.<\/p>\n
Overall, there were more than 622,000 sick days taken by teachers at primary and post-primary level in the 2024\/2025 school year.<\/p>\n
For the most recent school year, the comparable figure was just over 611,000 but will be higher as it does not include June 2026.<\/p>\n
The Department of Education said \u201coccupational injury leave\u201d had become available to teachers in May 2025.<\/p>\n
Since then, injuries suffered while working have accounted for almost 2,700 days of absence, mostly in primary schools.<\/p>\n
Overall, for the past two school years, more than 980,000 days of certified illness leave were taken by teachers at primary and post-primary level.<\/p>\n
A further 93,000 days were taken for self-certified illness, according to the data.<\/p>\n
The Department of Education said it did not hold more granular information on illness, for example for areas like mental health.<\/p>\n
It said this information may be held by individual schools but was not held centrally.<\/p>\n
The department said there were nearly 152,000 days of absence for pregnancy-related illness, more than two-thirds of them among primary teachers.<\/p>\n
It said the overall figures covered primary and post-primary education but did not include teachers employed by Education and Training Boards (ETBs).<\/p>\n
Asked about the figures, a Department of Education spokesperson said an occupational health strategy was in place for all schools.<\/p>\n
They said: \u201cThe aim of [this] is to promote the health and wellbeing of employees in the workplace, with a strong focus on prevention.\u201d<\/p>\n
It said advice was provided on wellbeing, bereavement, conflict and mediation while short-term counselling was also available.<\/p>\n
An employee assistance service was also in place with a dedicated freephone confidential helpline available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TEACHERS TOOK MORE than 3,400 days of sick leave over the past two school years because of assaults…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":569727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[6466,835,42,43,165258,45402,839,40,38,41,39,190293],"class_list":["post-569726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-department-of-education","tag-education","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-primary-schools","tag-sick-leave","tag-teachers","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-workplace-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/569727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}