A GROWING number of applicants have turned down job offers from government schools, leaving hundreds of teaching posts vacant.
The Education Department has sent out 1,020 letters to offer appointments to government secondary and primary schools, where there are 698 vacancies among the 3,000 teaching posts.
By mid-September, 663, or 65 per cent, of candidates had declined offers, leaving 341, or 49 per cent, of the vacant posts to be filled by substitute or temporary teachers.
A 500-strong teachers' union attributed the recruitment problems to poor working conditions.
The union warned that the problem would be aggravated if lecturers seconded to the Institute of Education were redeployed as teachers at government schools in future, which would affect their members' promotion prospects.
The Union of Graduate Officers in Government Secondary Schools decided at an extraordinary general meeting yesterday that teachers might take industrial action by refusing to do administrative work if they were affected by the redeployment package.