According to the Central Statistics Office 2011 census, there are 32 600 primary school teachers in Ireland; this is of a total workforce of 1 836 000. Female teachers account for 85% of all primary school teachers with only 15% of these being male teachers.32
Their workday consists of a minimum of 5–6 hours of continuous teaching, with little opportunity for vocal rest outside of a 10-minute break midmorning and 30 minutes at midday. The class teacher teaches all subjects including physical education, art, music, and singing. A class includes a cohort of children of the same age-group, for example, in a “Junior Infant” class, the age range is 4–5 years. In addition to their normal teaching duties, their contract includes 37 hours of playground duty during the school year. Added to this, there is the extended working day which includes meetings with parents and fellow teachers, lesson preparation, and corrections.
They work 183/187 days a year compared with 167/168 days for secondary school teachers. The extended working day can prolong the working day up to 10 hours. Teachers work 900 hours yearly as compared with the EU average of 700 hours.
Many teachers teach classes of >30 pupils, and in some cases, class sizes can be as large as 40 or more. With these supersized classes, there is an increase in classroom noise level and consequently a need on the part of the teacher to increase vocal loudness to be heard. Yet, they are dependent on their voice to function throughout their entire working career, which can be as long as 35–40 years. Teaching also requires a wide variation in voice use in terms of pitch, volume, quality in reading, singing, teaching drama, and physical education.
The Department of Education and Science in Ireland changed the primary school curriculum in 1999. The current curriculum is commonly referred to as the “new curriculum.” The curriculum which preceded it was introduced in 1977 and was more traditional in its teaching orientation. Children were expected to work independently, and there was less emphasis on oral communication.
An important component of the new curriculum is a greater emphasis on oral communication. Teachers are expected to encourage oral communication to enhance the child's learning. In implementing this, a large amount of teacher-student verbal interaction is required. This focus is more vocally demanding for the teacher and gives less opportunity for vocal rest. It also creates more background noise as both children and teachers are expected to be more vocal. Another change has been an increase in the number of subjects taught from 9 to 11 subjects. Teachers teach the core subjects English, Mathematics, and Gaeilge (Irish). Other subjects include Science, Music, Drama, Art, History, and Geography. Religion, Physical Education, and Social Personal and Health education are also taught. By comparison, Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence now has eight learning areas, and New Zealand also has eight learning areas.33 There are also recommendations on the number of hours per week that should spend teaching each subject. For example, the teaching of English and Irish should be allocated 4 and 3 hours per week, respectively.34 It is important to note that there is no voice training for student teachers or working teachers in Ireland, yet they are required to teach singing.
The National Curriculum Council and Assessment (NCCA) has reviewed the 1999 curriculum in 2005 and 2008a. In both reviews, teachers and principals identified time as one of their greatest challenges in implementing the curriculum. Teachers reported that they had insufficient time to fully implement curriculum subjects or to address all the objectives within each of these subjects.35, 36 Two separate dimensions of this time issue were identified: the scale and size of the curriculum; the challenge of meeting children's individual needs particularly in multigrade and large classes. In 2010, the curriculum has been described as overloaded by the NCCA in their article review on curriculum overload in primary schools.33