For those who could no longer see a farmer, there was the education crisis last weekend. Or well, an urgent part of that discouraging tangle: the teacher shortage. On Friday, the education ministers Dennis Wiersma and Robbert Dijkgraaf together sent a letter to the House of Representatives in which they make ‘unorthodox’ proposals to combat that shortage. Nothing ‘lifting over the summer holidays’, now that the hammock is appealing to everyone in education, but clearly explained, promising plans. You fall off your chair from so much decisiveness after a series of toothless and looking away education ministers.
Wiersma and Dijkgraaf joined On 1 and gave an interview in NRC Handelsblad† ‘Perhaps we let it go too long,’ says Wiersma in that interview. But that’s too much guilt. Since the beginning of this century ‘we’ have known, and they know in the government, how big and growing the teacher shortage is.
The Rinnooy Kan committee wrote in 2007 about a ‘quantitative and qualitative teacher shortage’. Since then it has gotten worse. ‘We’ never followed the excellent recommendations of this committee, because the ministers were literally powerless: the government had handed over all responsibility for the spending of money and personnel policy to the school administrators.
That is what I miss, in all the decisiveness of these ministers: a historical analysis of the derailment. Where did all the money for the fight against the teacher shortage go? Where is the leak? What caused overhead costs to increase and the number of people with a teaching certificate who are not in front of the classroom increased? Why did academics disappear from education? Meanwhile, academic achievements declined and the status of the teaching profession declined. No coincidence. Look the monster in the mouth and trace the causes, otherwise these suggestions will not work either.
And stop saying that teaching is so noble and wonderful, like Dijkgraaf did in On 1† No profession “makes such an impact,” he said (where did the word “influence” go?). It has become a tainted argument. You almost only hear it when it comes to poorly paid work, with a high workload, in education and care. Many teachers who love their job give up, just like general practitioners. Teaching should not be a calling, but an attractive, good job. Then that status will return automatically.
The minister’s plans are all good. More money for lateral entrants, a bonus for teaching more hours or working at a ‘difficult’ school, more flexible schedules. A four-day week of classes doesn’t have to be a disaster either. In the OECD countries with the best education, such as Estonia, Finland, South Korea and Japan, children are taught less than in our country, declining middle class. It is dangerous though: you can only manage with fewer teaching hours if you have excellent education.
A shorter school week does not have to mean a shorter school week. It can even be an enrichment: give back to children the partly cut-back culture and nature education for one part of the day, under the guidance of, for example, a painter, musician, director, writer or biologist who enjoys it. No, these are not unauthorized bastards, but skilled professionals who add something.
The most interesting are the ideas that the ministers are still ‘talking about’: making higher demands on teacher training, forcing schools to cooperate in allocating staff and giving permanent contracts. They want to change the law in such a way that it is possible to intervene in personnel policy and control the spending of public money. Here is hope. In this way, as a minister of education, you finally make an ‘impact’ again. Beautiful job.