Richard BrockenPrimary education student practices with letters
A new cabinet also faces a tough job in the field of education. While students’ basic skills are deteriorating, primary and secondary schools are facing severe staff shortages. And that will remain a major problem in the coming years.
This threatens to have a bad outcome, especially for socially vulnerable students. How can schools deal with this?
‘Secretly’ working full time
It was a harsh message last month from outgoing education ministers Mariëlle Paul and Robbert Dijkgraaf: the shortage of teachers will remain alarmingly high over the next ten years, despite extra money and all the plans that have been devised in recent years. Primary education is short of 9,800 full-time teachers, secondary education is short of 3,800.
“All professions in the public sector are tight,” says professor of sociology Thijs Bol, who conducted research into the relationship between education and inequality of opportunity. “But what is striking in education is that a high percentage of staff is leaving. The shortage is therefore not only due to limited recruitment from teacher training colleges, but also due to relatively high outflow.”
An important reason for teachers to quit is the high workload. While teachers hardly work full-time on paper, “they secretly do so to do everything they have to do,” says Bol.
The workload is very high at the Wilhelminaschool in Rijnsburg. And Miss Rendi notices that:
At school with teacher Rendi, the workload is often very high
The Education Council warns that vulnerable children are particularly hard hit. This is partly due to the shortage itself, which is higher in schools with many students who grow up in disadvantaged situations, says Bol. “The teacher shortage there is twice as great as in schools with more advantaged children.”
In addition, children from problem families benefit much more from good and stable education than other children. Bol: “They receive less support from home, and it is more difficult to contact them.” A lot of potential is lost in this group due to the teacher shortage.
Divide the problem
Because the problems are not equally distributed across the country, the education ministers want schools to cooperate more with each other to alleviate the staff shortage. They are also committed to various measures, including increasing lateral entry, making teacher training more accessible and reducing the workload to make the work more attractive.
That seems easier said than done. Bol thinks that a number of administrative tasks can be eliminated, but to significantly reduce the workload for teachers, the number of teaching hours will have to be reduced. While teaching time is already under pressure due to the teacher shortage.
To increase the quality of education and to relieve teachers’ burden, classes could be reduced. But that costs extra teachers. Bol fears that more unqualified teachers will enter the classroom, “while this does not address the problem of educational quality. We need qualified teachers.”
The sociologist believes that politicians recognized the problem too late. “The teacher shortage is not new, politicians lack vision. This problem was hardly discussed during the elections. We need courage to tackle this in the longer term and make the profession attractive again.”
2024-01-24 21:21:34
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