Zero comments. That was the meager harvest after the distribution of a vacancy for a teacher at the KlimOp primary school in Zwaag, Noord-Holland. In the meantime, the need had come. The teacher of group 8 was at home for a long time with the postcovid syndrome. Eleven replacements followed her: all gave up within days or weeks.
Fortunately, Muriël Verhoeven (28) was there. More than a year ago she canceled her permanent contract in secondary special education to travel with her boyfriend. ‘After coming back I wasn’t sure what I wanted. Self-employed was the perfect solution.’ Around noon she registered with a secondment agency for teaching staff. ‘At a quarter to one I could choose from three jobs.’ It became the KlimOp, group 8.
emergency handle
Temporary employment agencies also offered a solution for departing teachers from groups 4 and 7. When Aaldert Goverts took office as the new director of KlimOp on 1 March of this year, he became acquainted with four employees who he knew would be gone after the summer. ‘I am not at all in favor of this construction’, he sighs. “It’s an emergency measure.”
According to figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics, in 2017 there were still 66 thousand temporary workers and self-employed people active in education, in the first quarter of this year their number has grown to 96 thousand. This not only concerns teachers, but also flexible school counselors, interim directors and teaching assistants.
Temporary workers in education cost almost half more per hour than a teacher employed by a school. Schools prefer not to use them for that reason. But now that classes are increasingly in danger of being sent home due to the continuing teacher shortage and a lingering corona pandemic, they are often seen as a last resort.
crooked faces
This results in skewed faces among permanent staff, noted the Education Council, the government’s most important advisory body in the field of education issues. late last year in a report: their interim colleagues feel little connection with the school and avoid difficult tasks such as annual meetings or conversations with angry parents, while they also get better pay.
Due to more favorable conditions, some teachers switch to an agency. ‘This will make it even more difficult for schools to find permanent staff’, according to the Education Council. ‘They spend even more money on personnel costs for fewer teacher hours. (…) The professionalism and attractiveness of the teaching profession can be damaged, resulting in further loss of quality. A vicious circle has arisen.’
The Ministry of Education recently calculated that schools spent a total of 660 million euros on ‘external parties’ in 2019320 million more than in 2012. Those amounts will probably be much higher by now: schools are using the resources that have been released through the National Education Program, intended to clear the corona arrears, to help pay for temporary workers.
Gigantic revenue model
‘There is a gigantic revenue model behind it’, says KlimOp director Goverts. He himself has had enough: if the externals at his school have left after the summer holidays, no new ones will return. ‘I see what the effect is and I also see how things can be done differently.’ Larger groups, for example, he suggests, or the introduction of a four-day working week.
It is remarkable that Goverts is critical of temporary workers in education: he is himself an interim director. “But,” he says, “the agency I work for is committed to sustainable change.”
For example, Goverts plans to introduce a new educational concept at KlimOp within a year, aimed at knowledge transfer and discipline. He has done this before at two other schools. Once the concept is implemented, his job is done and he can move on to the next school. It is different for teachers, he believes: after all, they are the implementers of the concept. ‘Then you need a permanent team of people who want to have a blast together for at least five years.’
clearing debris
That is not an option for freelancer Muriël Verhoeven. Her jobs last a few months at most. When she heard that group 8 of the KlimOp had already worn out eleven teachers in one year, she felt the need to help the school out of the fire. “It may sound stupid, but somehow this is also clearing rubble,” she says. ‘I hope to contribute to get a school back on track.’
Marjolein Roozendaal, who works one day a week at KlimOp as an internal counselor and is active as an educational advisor at 19 other schools, also feels that she is getting a lot more done since she has been working for an agency.
She takes the more than twenty years of experience she has gained in permanent employment with her in her current position, which is no longer dominated by the issues of the day, but by the content. “If I’ve scheduled class visits now, I’ll actually do those class visits and I won’t have to pick up the phone 36 times in between because Chelsea from group 5 has to be picked up by her mother’s sister.”
The bell rings, time for a break. Director Aaldert Goverts pricks a salad in his office. He is in an exuberant mood: he has just been told that the teacher training college student he wants to hire after the summer has passed. ‘And I’ve also roped in four other people – no, not temps – who will start after the holidays, yessss!’
Now it is important to keep them, he knows. ‘They have to remain fascinated, given enough opportunities to continue to develop. Hopefully they won’t go away then.’