Jack Murphy

The scheme pays tuition fees in full – support worth up to £20,000 – for trainee teachers in the shortage subjects the department has identified, but only for those beginning training from September 2026. Approximately 120 students already partway through the same courses at St Mary’s University College and Stranmillis University College receive nothing. From next month they will sit in the same lectures as fully funded classmates, and every one of them has offered to sign the identical two-year commitment to teach in a Northern Ireland school.

Students already training to teach maths, science, technology and Irish-medium subjects have stated that they expect to graduate owing between £40,000 and £50,000 while their classmates who begin their courses in September will leave debt-free.

The decision under challenge is dated 10 July 2026. On 6 August the Department confirmed it considered the matter closed. Judicial review proceedings will follow if there is no satisfactory response.

The department has said that funding is not available to extend the scheme to current undergraduates and that doing so would not increase the number of new entrants into teacher education, “which is the fundamental purpose of the scheme”.

Phoenix Law says that explanation is the heart of the legal problem.

Jack Murphy, solicitor at Phoenix Law, who has carriage of the matter, said: “This challenge matters well beyond the 120 students who have instructed us. It goes to how public money is spent on the teaching workforce at a time when schools across Northern Ireland cannot staff maths, science, technology and Irish-medium classrooms, and to whether a department can define the purpose of its own scheme so narrowly that an entire cohort of trainee specialists falls outside it without their position ever being properly assessed.

“The department says the fundamental purpose of the scheme is to increase new entrants. But that is not all the scheme does. It also requires every student who receives the money to commit to teaching in a school in the North for two years after qualifying. That is a condition about keeping teachers here, not about recruiting them, and the department has said so itself in correspondence. Our clients have offered to sign that very same commitment. Nobody has ever assessed their proposal against it. A public authority cannot define its objective more narrowly than its own scheme and then use that definition to shut out everything that falls outside the line it has drawn.

“Our clients are not seeking compensation, or back pay, or anything at all that the 2026 entrants are not receiving. They asked for the same deal, from the same date, on the same term, in exchange for 240 years of guaranteed specialist teaching in Northern Ireland classrooms. They put a costed proposal to the department. They gave evidence to the Assembly’s Education Committee. They met officials in June. And in April they asked the Permanent Secretary to do the arithmetic on retaining trainees already in the system rather than only recruiting new ones. That analysis has never been produced.

“The department has told these students in writing that their concerns are legitimate and has acknowledged their sense of injustice. Having said both of those things, it offered them nothing at all and closed the file. Decisions of this kind have to be taken lawfully, on the relevant considerations, and by a process the department actually follows. That is what a judicial review examines, and it is why these students have had no realistic option but to take this step.”

Phoenix Law has asked the department to respond to the pre-action correspondence and has indicated that judicial review proceedings will be issued in the absence of a satisfactory response.