News item | 01-07-2022 | 15:00
How annoying it is if you are increasingly sent home because there is no teacher, so that you can spend less time on reading, math and writing. When extra work comes on your plate because you don’t have a colleague with whom you can tackle the task together. Or if you don’t have your teacher team ready for the coming school year just before the summer starts. The teacher shortage is serious and it is getting bigger every day. Despite all actions, we have made too little progress in tackling this problem. Therefore, all registers must be open. We continue with what works, expand where necessary and adjust where we are now stuck. Moreover, structural change requires new ideas and unorthodox measures.
This is what education ministers Dennis Wiersma (Primary and Secondary Education) and Robbert Dijkgraaf (MBO and Higher Education) wrote to the House of Representatives today. A different approach is needed, with more national control by the government. In addition to the focus on the shortages in primary education, more attention will be paid to secondary education, special education, secondary vocational education and school leaders in primary education. Regional cooperation between schools and teacher training courses will be further strengthened and there will be more insight into the current shortages.
Train more teachers
Measures that work well are expanded. Both ministers are committed to:
- A more attractive profession, partly due to higher wages and less work pressure. The government is investing 1.5 billion euros in this on a structural basis and has made agreements about this in the Education Agreement.
- More side entry. People who want to become a teacher from another profession receive more money for this. Teacher training courses will respond better to the knowledge and skills that lateral entrants often already have, so that they receive more tailor-made training than is currently the case. In addition, there will be more money to train teaching assistants to become teachers.
- More students attend teacher training courses, through better and personal study choice information. Both ministers also want to encourage teacher training programs to cooperate more, with each other and with schools, because that is where profit can be made.
- Work more hours. It is examined how teachers can be encouraged to work more hours, for example by means of a bonus for working more hours or working full-time, and how obstacles to this can be removed. School boards are being asked to offer more flexibility in working hours, so that teachers can, for example, take their children to school.
Unorthodox measures
Both ministers expect to take significant steps with these measures, but more is needed to really tackle this urgent problem. That is why the ministers want to start a social discussion about unorthodox measures, through conversations in the country and via social media.
Funding incentives
Because of the way schools are now funded, there is no incentive to jointly solve the teacher shortage in the region. Teacher training colleges compete to attract students, schools steal teachers from each other. While cooperation is important, because within regions not every school is equally affected by the shortages. The ministers want to explore whether it is desirable to introduce other financial incentives in primary and secondary education, whether or not temporarily or regionally.
Governance and supervision
As a good employer, schools and boards must ensure that teachers can do their work properly and with pleasure. This is essential to attract and retain teachers. School boards must therefore ensure good work through good guidance for starters, development opportunities and attractive contracts. This does not work equally well everywhere, which is why we come up with legal requirements for good personnel policy.
Working together for the best teachers
Research into high-performing countries shows that the teaching profession is highly regarded there and that high demands are placed on teachers. After all, they determine the quality of education. The question is whether we in the Netherlands, in addition to the steps that will be taken in schools and teacher training courses in the coming period, want to make even higher demands on the profession and training, so that the profession becomes more attractive. We need to look carefully at what this means for the teacher shortage, in the short and long term.
The organization of the school
The classic picture of one teacher teaching in class is no longer feasible in many places. We need to look at how, for example, we can help better with more hands around the classroom. But sometimes also giving more room for a different daily and weekly schedule in primary and secondary schools, in order to teach better and at the same time reduce the teacher shortage. Thanks to more support functions in the school, so that the teacher can concentrate on teaching. This can be done by bringing other expertise into the school that can take work off the hands of teachers, so that teachers can focus on simply good teaching. Digital tools can also help ease teachers’ tasks. The quality of education must be and remain the guiding principle in this regard.
Dennis Wiersma (Primary and Secondary Education): “Teachers, students and parents notice every day how insidiously the teacher shortage is disrupting the classroom, the school and the future of students. We therefore do not have the luxury of creating taboos, we also need to quickly talk to each other about sensitive topics. The classic picture of a permanent teacher in front of the class is no longer feasible in many places. Increasingly, groups have to stay at home for a day or receive lessons from a teaching assistant. I understand very well that many parents are concerned about whether their children are still getting a good education. In order to continue to offer good education, we must be creative and look at how we can continue to guarantee good education. We have to work even harder for that.”
Robbert Dijkgraaf (MBO and higher education): “The great shortage of teachers is the Achilles heel of education. All other structural improvements that we want to realize in education and society are related to this. The shortages are now also being felt in MBO. Teacher training courses play an important role in training more new teachers, and as far as I am concerned also in the guidance of starters and professionalization. In this way we create an attractive profession in which learning and development are central. Addressing this particularly tough problem requires the commitment of everyone involved in education: educators, employers and educators.”
In the coming period, the government will continue and expand a number of successful actions, but also prepare other measures and a central approach. At the moment there is a shortage of 9,100 full-time teachers in primary education and an estimated 1,700 FTE in secondary education, especially in shortage subjects such as Dutch and mathematics. In MBO, the shortages are particularly noticeable in the shortage sectors such as care and technology.