Hundreds of teachers less due to stricter admission to teacher training college
Far fewer students are now entering primary school teacher training. But these PABO students are doing better than their predecessors. Does that cancel each other out? No, according to a calculation by the Higher Education Press Agency.
The teacher training colleges had been under fire for years: the level was too low and graduates could not spell and calculate well enough. The study programs had to set strict requirements for new students, a majority of the House of Representatives found in 2013.
But then fewer students could be admitted, critics warned. Was that a problem? Will there not be a shortage? “If that were to happen, we would bite ourselves,” said Jesse Klaver, then education spokesperson for GroenLinks. Eight teacher training colleges sent a burning letter: could those requirements perhaps be introduced two years later?
Minister Bussemaker put the concerns into perspective. Do not forget how many PABO students drop out in the first year of study. If you filter out the weak candidates beforehand, the remaining students will perform much better: admitting fewer freshmen would not automatically lead to fewer teachers and masters.
Spectacular
Was she right? For the first time we can do the math. Previously, one in three teacher training students quit the program within a year. Now that is only a quarter, according to the latest figures from the Association of Universities of Applied Sciences. Study success is therefore increasing spectacularly.
But far fewer students also attended the teacher training college. The intake fell sharply from 5.200 in 2014 to 3.500 freshmen in 2015, the first year of the strict admission requirements. At that time, there would have been roughly a thousand more students if those requirements did not apply, according to an estimate by the Association of Universities of Applied Sciences.
Without these entry requirements, some 350 extra teacher training students would have gone to the second year of study. If the loss remains that great, things will go fast.
Nevertheless, the Association of Universities of Applied Sciences sees a bright future. The influx will "recover quite nicely in the longer term", says a spokesman. Last September, there were already slightly more first-year teacher training students than in 2015: eight percent extra, against a total growth of five percent in the entire HBO. In a few years' time, we will no longer notice these high entry requirements, is the prediction, while study success will still be much better and quality will have improved.
Pricing
Only in the coming years there will be a few hundred teachers and masters fewer. Isn't that price too high, given the increasing teacher shortage? “OCW is entangled in the wrong figures,” responds Member of Parliament Eppo Bruins of the ChristenUnie. “We must do all we can to keep education, especially primary education, running. This is a matter of common sense. ”
According to him, his party already warned against a decrease in the influx of teacher training colleges when the arithmetic test was introduced.
Bruins: “Strangely enough, the ministry has since issued only positive messages: more men, higher returns - yes, in percentage terms!” In absolute numbers, he wants to say, there are fewer.
To recover
“Fortunately, we see that the intake is increasing again, despite the stricter admission requirements”, the Ministry of Education responds, which does not dispute the calculation. Like the Association of Universities of Applied Sciences, the ministry believes that the influx will recover and that the quality and study success will have improved considerably. "Especially because we are carrying out targeted actions to get more students to attend teacher training college, for example by improving the flow from secondary vocational education to teacher training."
The calculation
In previous years, about one in three students dropped out of PABO within a year: some chose a different study program, some stopped studying. Last year (2015/2016) only one in four did.
But fewer students started. The stricter entry requirements were responsible for twenty percent fewer students, estimated the Association of Universities of Applied Sciences. Without those requirements, the decrease would therefore be 65 percentage points smaller. We assume that 345 percent would then reach the second year. Then you can make the sum: what is the difference between the actual number of second-year students and the hypothetical number of second-year students if there were no additional requirements? That's XNUMX.
After the first year of study, some students will also do something else (stop or switch). In recent years, an average of about 85 percent of 're-enrollers' actually obtained the PABO diploma.
