At Least 24 EU Countries Struggle With Teacher Shortages
upstart writes:
At least 24 EU countries struggle with teacher shortages:
Most EU member states see a large proportion of their teaching vacancies unfilled at the start of each school year, often thanks to low wages, high workload, and an ageing teacher population.
Sweden has been reported as one of the worst affected, with 153,000 qualified teachers needed by 2035.
Only Croatia and Cyprus did not report a lack of education staff, according to the European Commission's Education and Training Monitor 2023 report, while Greece's existing public data does not allow it to assess whether all needs are covered or if specific subjects might suffer shortages.
Most countries face teacher shortages specifically in STEM subjects and qualified personnel in early childhood education and care.
Germany's Education and Science Workers' Union, GEW, has warned "against lowering the standards for pedagogical qualifications to compensate for the shortage of staff."
[...] However, an EU-level solution might be difficult to implement.
"One of the reasons why it is difficult to come up with a European comparable cross-country indicator on teacher shortage is because countries have different educational institutional rules," wrote education economist Giorgio Di Pietro in a technical report for the EU's Joint Research Centre.
"For instance, formal teaching qualifications can be obtained in different ways in different countries. In some countries, one automatically becomes a teacher when they complete the teacher preparation programme, while in others there are additional steps to complete."
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