Primary school director Irma Pieper (53) loves puzzles, but in recent years it has been hard to find missing pieces. After sixteen years as head of Montessori child center De Plotter in Zutphen, she started to wonder for the first time last year: if this is it, is this still a job for me? ‘It’s about putting out fires, I’m mainly busy looking for staff.’
Schools in the east of the country start on Monday. A major problem that mainly occurs in the Randstad has been noticeable for some time in rural areas: the shortage of teachers. Completing the occupation is not yet as complicated as in the big cities, but a turning point has taken place. The fear of too few students to fill classes has given way in many (former) shrinking regions to the fear of whether children will have a teacher for the class.
Pieper is a director of the swinging type. Tanned and dressed in a floral skirt with white Adidas sneakers underneath, she addresses her team on Thursday with ‘darlings’. Pieper jokes that she is happy that no one ‘accidentally pregnant’ came back from vacation and that her occupation is still in order. Not an annoying message for a group of which ‘everyone worked more days last year’ than stated in their contract.
Before the summer, Pieper wasn’t sure she was going to get this puzzle done. Because of a colleague who left for another job and an extra class to keep the groups from bursting at the seams, Pieper was faced with the difficult task of finding two FTEs. But on Thursday she was able to introduce Adne, Sjoukje, Leonie and Sanne to their new colleagues on the team day.
National problem
De Plotter’s viscous quest is all too recognizable for the General Education Association (AOb). ‘Broadly speaking, shortages are now occurring everywhere’, says director Thijs Roovers. ‘From the shrinking regions in Groningen’s gas extraction area to the remote corners of Zeeland.’ The puzzles are still placed there with some effort, but in terms of substitutes it usually does not last. In the Randstad it has already come to the point that many schools do not have a complete team before the start of the new year.
And so each school is looking for creative solutions for itself. The Veluwe Education Group, with eighteen primary school locations in and around Apeldoorn, has had what they call a ‘flex pool’ for some years now. Masters and teachers who are employed, but do not have a fixed class. They can be used at all locations.
‘A win-win situation’, says Chantal Hagen, director of one of the schools affiliated with the Veluwe Education Group. ‘We can fill gaps more easily and teachers who don’t want a fixed class yet can gain experience with us.’
Pieper does not have that luxury in Zutphen. It took some luck to get her regular team around. For example, she benefited from the migration from the Randstad to the east, as the new teachers introduce themselves on Thursday. Like Leonie Hoogeslag, who moved to Zutphen from The Hague five years ago. She was homeschooling her own children during the lockdown. It went so well – much to the amusement of her new colleagues, who know parents with very different experiences – that she decided to do something with it. From Monday she will take her first steps as a teacher.
Education quality
Wonderful, of course, thinks Roovers of the AOb, but the small numbers of lateral entrants do not solve the bigger problem. The move from the big cities, where teachers usually cannot afford a house in the center, will not solve the problem in the outlying areas by any means, he says, while the problem in the Randstad is getting bigger in the meantime.
Roovers recalls that there are three decades of reports that warned against this scenario of national shortages. “And we’re not even at the peak yet.” He denounces the short-term solutions, with interns, artists and childcare staff in front of the class. ‘This only exacerbates the already enormous problem, because it comes at the expense of the quality of education.’
The result, he says, is growing inequality of opportunity. Between students of parents who can pay for tutoring and parents who cannot, just to name a few. And meanwhile, the structural shortages have not been resolved, so that masters and teachers have something to choose from. A situation where schools in lesser neighborhoods are irrevocably the victims.
It’s crude, but the tight labor market also has a bright side for teachers. For example, at De Plotter in Zutphen, former child and youth psychologist Sjoukje Delfsma, like her new colleague Leonie, was immediately able to work as a side-entry student at her own children’s Montessori school. “A long cherished dream has come true.”
For Adne Holmer, another of the new teachers at De Plotter, the tight labor market also works to his advantage. With his 27 years and barely three years of experience, he is already where he wants to be. ‘After my move to Zutphen, I only had to call Irma.’