Crisis in Education: Swiss Teachers’ Association Warns of Teacher Shortage and Calls for Action

To speak of a lyre would not do justice to the relevance of the problem. And yet the teachers’ association warns of the same problem every year: the lack of teachers is forcing schools to “start the school year with emergency solutions,” as Dagmar Rösler emphasized to the media on Thursday.

The President of the Teachers’ Association criticizes the fact that the teacher shortage that has been acute in many regions for years could have been prevented: “In many cantons, education policy has done too little for too long.” The cantons have known since the 2018 education report at the latest that “something has to work”. But many “didn’t act or acted too late”.

The situation is a little less tense this year than last year, as a survey by SRF shows. Most of the cantons in German-speaking Switzerland were able to fill all of the positions, and there are still vacancies in some cantons – including Aargau, St.Gallen and Zurich. However, according to Rösler, many schools employ people without any pedagogical training as teachers: “This must not become the norm, teachers need pedagogically sound training.” Otherwise, the quality of education is endangered in the medium to long term.

Association wants to put pressure on politicians

This is unacceptable for the teachers’ association. For this reason, the association is launching a supra-cantonal “Action Plan for Educational Quality” this autumn. The aim of this is, on the one hand, to make the teaching profession more attractive again so that there are enough trained staff available. “On the other hand”, says Rösler, “the working conditions must be improved and the burden on the teachers reduced”. Otherwise the school staff would burn out.

How the association intends to achieve these goals remains unclear for the time being. What is clear, however, is that solutions are being sought at cantonal level. We work closely with the cantonal teachers’ associations and will support them in developing concrete measures tailored to the cantonal situation and formulating demands on politicians. At the same time, the public is to be sensitized to the topic with a national campaign. For Rösler, one thing is clear: “Without pressure, nothing moves in education policy.”

When asked about the criticism, the Conference of Cantonal Ministers of Education (EDK) pointed out that they had “no political mandate in connection with the shortage of teachers”. The individual cantons and their municipalities are responsible for this. In recent years, these have “improved the employment conditions in many places and also launched campaigns to recruit teachers”. In addition, the pedagogical universities have developed courses for lateral entrants, the EDK reports.

There is a slight relaxation

However, the problem is likely to persist for years to come. Also because the political measures sought by the teachers’ association cannot be implemented overnight. According to scenarios from the Federal Statistical Office, between 43,000 and 47,000 new primary school teachers will have to be trained between 2022 and 2031. This is the only way to absorb population growth and exits and retirements. But the forecasts show that the teacher training colleges will probably only issue around 34,000 teaching diplomas in the same period.

This gap is to be partly filled by foreign teachers or teachers with training for other school levels. If that succeeds, the teacher shortage should ease slightly by 2031. The BFS writes: “The annual supply of new teachers is likely to approach demand in most regions, although the situation varies greatly from region to region.”