AOb: 'Make teacher training courses free'
Use free teacher training as a means to combat the teacher shortage, advocated AOb-chairman Tamar van Gelder. “For me that is a no-brainer, yet it is not really seriously investigated.”
image: Angeliek de Jonge
The subject of education was barely present in the programs of the past elections, let alone free teacher training. While Amsterdam PvdA councilor Marjolein Moorman will be in office in 2022 Education magazine advocated free teacher training, a wish she still regularly repeats. The call for free teacher training from local groups in The Hague of D66 and the PvdA - two parties that like to profile themselves as education parties - also found no response in the national programs.
Halving tuition fees
The National Sector Plans Committee recently recommended switching from the one-year plan training to become a first-degree teacher to create a paid course for graduates who already have a master's degree in a school subject such as Dutch or mathematics. And since the 2018-2019 academic year, tuition fees for teacher training students have been halved for the first two years. This measure will be stopped in 2024-2025.
Lateral entrants often have to look for an employer themselves and peddle the subsidy
So there are initiatives for free teacher training. “For example, there are all kinds of different schemes for lateral entrants,” he says AOb-chairman Tamar van Gelder. “But they often have to look for an employer themselves and peddle the subsidy. That makes it unattractive to become a lateral entrant.”
She believes that the costs associated with teacher training are a blind spot for policymakers when it comes to solving the teacher shortage. “While: for me it is a no-brainer that you remove barriers.”
I am in favor of a more uniform teacher training program, but with control and direction for the profession
Various models are conceivable. For example, PvdA councilor Moorman wants to establish a national academy for teachers, comparable to the training provided by Defense or the Police Academy. At a national academy, education is nationalized, while there is now 386 paths to teaching are. “A national academy is very vulnerable to the influence of politics,” Van Gelder warns. “I am in favor of a more uniform teacher training course, but with control and direction for the profession. All the roads that exist now also make things unnecessarily complex.”
Van Gelder: “Certainly for people who are already working and are considering becoming a teacher, it should be made very simple and cheap. Without compromising the competence requirements and authorities.”
The number of students is not decreasing, but has also hardly increased
At the start of the scheme that halves student tuition fees for two years, there was fear that the teaching profession would become unattractive. This fear is unfounded: the number of students is not decreasing, but has also hardly increased. “The Reduced Statutory Tuition Fees Act (has) not demonstrably contributed to the influx,” Berenschot concluded in 2021. So why would you broaden such schemes? “Because of the urgency so big is,” says Van Gelder. The experiment ran too short to draw any conclusions, she believes. “People also say: soon everyone will become a teacher, if it is free. But isn't that the case at the Police Academy? As long as the bar remains high, it will select itself just fine.”
Costs
How much free teacher training costs depends on the model chosen. By comparison: police training courses - one intermediate vocational education, one bachelor's degree, four master's degrees - provide approximately 2500 police officers annually for more than 2 billion euros (including specialist training). “That is much less than the costs of low literacy that we as a society have to bear due to the 9 percent teacher shortage,” says Van Gelder.
