Money for temporary corona jobs in education
Primary, secondary and secondary vocational education together will receive 210 million euros for temporary extra staff. The Ministry of Education hopes this will ease the pressure on schools in corona time. The AOb believes that the teacher shortage will continue to affect the sector.
Picture: Type tank
The money will be available from 1 January and is an elaboration of the so-called corona jobs, which the Ministry of Social Affairs provides end of August announced. The cabinet wants to deploy the unemployed and employees who are redundant at their company in education and care where hands are short. "Because of corona, the pressure on teachers and school leaders in particular is extra great, for example if their colleagues have to be quarantined," said education minister Arie Slob in a press release from the ministry. 'With this money we want to try to provide relief.'
More lessons
His colleague minister Ingrid Van Engelshoven deals with secondary vocational education, among other things, where she sees the workload increasing: 'In MBO, education continues as much as possible physically, but the one and a half meters must be observed, which means that more lessons have to be given. become.'
This amount will hopefully help to relieve some of the pressure, but you will not find extra teachers with it
The Ministry of Education (OCW) earmarks this one-off money for the replacement of teachers, for guest lecturers or for temporary teaching support staff. The AOb asked regularly in recent months extra hands in class. “It's great that this call is being heard”, responds Eugenie Stolk, chairman of the AOb. "Hopefully this amount will help to relieve some of the pressure, but you will not find additional teachers."
Competent teachers
Supporters who help enforce corona rules or supervise tests and exams may be available at short notice, AOb. Things get trickier when qualified teachers are needed. Stolk: “The teacher shortage was already there before corona and is now also there. We notice it because there is hardly any replacement to be found. To solve that problem - to structurally get more qualified teachers again - we really need to make structural investments.”
In addition, little of the one-off corona millions will remain when you distribute them across all schools and institutions, Stolk thinks. OCW has not yet published what the distribution across the three education sectors will look like. The exact rules for the use of the money are also not yet clear.
