There are far too few teachers. Even though salaries have gone up in the meantime, far too few students still manage to find their way to the PABO teacher training course. And many teachers are retiring. So something has to be done. In Tilburg, ‘talent brokers’ like Beppie Smit try to get people excited about a job at primary school.
Beppie herself was a teacher and principal at a primary school. She has since made a significant career in education. That talent brokers now have to come in to enthuse people for her profession: it hurts her quite a bit: “Because it is such a beautiful job. But it’s also good that you have to show who you are and what you have to offer.”
“I want to mean something to children.”
Getting people excited about education, that’s Beppie’s job now. Whether it concerns employees who want to move on. Or people like Monique van Weert. Her children are now grown and independent and she is looking for a new challenge. She is interested in a job as a teaching assistant: “Now it’s time for me”, she says firmly to Beppie. She really likes it: “I want to do what my heart is in. Doing something for children, both in terms of learning and well-being.” The fact that the need is high is great for Monique: “This is very favorable for me. There is plenty to do.”
Fontys’ PABO schools in Tilburg, Eindhoven and Den Bosch each deliver about seventy teachers a year. “A halving compared to the past, when I was still at the training”, notes Beppie. “And due to the aging population, many teachers are retiring. But the kids keep coming.”
“Teacher drifts away from what matters.”
The government has done a lot in recent years to make the teaching profession more attractive. Higher salaries and money for extra employees so that there is less work pressure. Yet no extra students are coming to the PABO schools. Director Nus Waleson knows where the shoe pinches: “Actually, you see the same in healthcare. The profession drifts away from the core of what matters: providing care in health care and teaching in education. If we can do something about that, about that administrative burden, that would help a lot for the image of the profession.”
By making the training more flexible for lateral entrants and part-time students, Waleson hopes to increase the number of students. He thinks it will be all right: “I am unbreakably optimistic.”
At Tangent, the umbrella organization of 17 primary schools in Tilburg for which Beppie works, the need is slightly less from now on. Because Monique has now been told that she can work as a teaching assistant at one of the schools.