Lower secondary education finds it difficult to find qualified teachers
One in five schools in Dutch secondary education can hardly find qualified teachers for the lower years. This is evident from the international Talis study of educational staff of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Image: Pixabay
This makes the Netherlands a mid-range driver within Europe. In Belgium it takes twice as much trouble to find teachers with the right papers. In the Scandinavian countries this is much less. In Finland, lack of competence is rare. There, only 2 percent of schools report problems finding qualified teachers, while all teachers in Finland have a master's degree.
Table: Shortage of qualified teachers by country
| Belgium | 46% |
| England | 38% |
| France | 36% |
| EU average | 25% |
| USA | 24% |
| Oecd average | 21% |
| The Netherlands | 21% |
| Sweden | 13% |
| Norway | 4% |
| Finland | 2% |
Alternative routes
Due to the worldwide shortages of qualified teachers, in many countries fast tracks made: side roads and winding paths to the teaching profession. The OECD finds that such alternative routes must be subject to strict requirements, so that the quality of side entrants is just as high as that of teachers who have followed the usual route of teacher training. For example, the control of the quality and the requirements must be in the hands of the same accreditation organizations as the regular teacher training courses.
Due to worldwide shortages of qualified teachers, side roads have been made towards the teaching profession in many countries
"The OECD thus sets a hard standard for obtaining a license and rightly so," says Henrik de Moel, executive director of secondary education at the AOb. "Competent teachers provide demonstrably better education, so we have to monitor the quality of the training. There are voices, for example from the employers' organization VO-raad, to let schools themselves play a much larger role in assessing whether someone is suitable for We don't think that's a good idea, especially because there is a risk that interests other than quality will play a role."
Starter guidance
Dutch school leaders do not see any shortages of support staff (5 percent), while in Europe more than a third of schools (36 percent) are struggling with this. Fifty countries took part in the Talis study on work perception, shortages, education and working conditions in the lower years of secondary education and 50 in primary education. The number of participating primary schools in the Netherlands was too low for reporting. It does appear, however, that nine out of ten teachers in primary (primary) and secondary (secondary) education are very satisfied with their work.
The situation of starters is more problematic. Only 31 percent in secondary education is supervised for their first job in education, in primary education this is even worse and the percentage is 15 percent.
AOb-director Henrik de Moel: 'Incomprehensible that not all starters receive guidance'
"It is incomprehensible that this is not 100 percent in both sectors," he says AObdriver De Moel. "In the collective labor agreements for primary and secondary education, very clear agreements have been made about reduction of hours for starters and supervision. We know from the scientific literature that precisely this supervision is essential to help starters through the difficult first years and to keep them in education. currently 30 percent of starters in secondary education leave within 5 years. If we want to reduce the teacher shortage, that percentage has to go down. That is why we want to pay extra attention to this in the new collective labor agreement. AOb we will also pay extra attention to this and take action if starters report to us that the guidance is missing or inadequate."
