Verheggen: 'Structural measures needed to solve a teacher shortage'
"Only structural measures, such as a better salary and less work pressure, can solve the teacher shortage", emphasizes AObchairman Liesbeth Verheggen. Unfortunately, in the parliamentary debate today, she expects a lot of short-term emergency measures and few investment plans. "They are necessary, but it must be one and one."
Verheggen calls that sad. "Research by the economist Wimar Bolhuis shows that political parties systematically make nice election promises about investment in education, but use education in the formation as a cash cow to solve other problems."
Investing in education sounds good during election time, Bolhuis writes in his thesis published today, just like cutting back on the government apparatus. In practice, cabinets end up spending more on government bureaucracy than promised in the election manifestos and there is more tax cuts for businesses.
Raw material
"That has to change," says Verheggen. "Now that the gas tap is closed, knowledge is our most important raw material. Therefore, invest in education." The AOb has therefore made it clear on the eve of the teachers' debate in the House of Representatives that several cabinets have deliberately cut back on the terms of employment for teaching staff. "Eleven times on the structural salary increase, 19 times on the incidental wage component!" Discounts that have cost teaching staff hundreds of millions, it turned out the Reference Model Evaluation report of which the AOb listed the most important facts for the House of Representatives.
Research shows that political parties systematically make nice election promises about investment in education, but use education as a cash cow in formation
Vicious circle
The union is also very concerned about the workload caused by the teacher shortage. "Staff enters a vicious circle," signals the AOb-chair. "It is often about the teacher who is not there, but we are also very concerned about the staff who are there and have to solve the case. We see that the workload increases when a colleague is absent, which means that more colleagues are falling out, as the absenteeism figures already prove. Time for refresher courses is limited because there are no substitutes." Also informed about this AOb House of Representatives with a letter.
For primary education, the solution often mentioned is that all teachers have to work a few hours longer. "But our work pressure study shows that teachers have been working overtime for a long time," says Verheggen. "So it's unrealistic to ask to work a few extra hours.
In addition, many teachers work part-time for personal reasons. Because of the balance between private and work, or to deal with the workload, it turns out from our research."
Shrinkage
In secondary education, where the number of pupils is declining, the teacher shortage is growing more slowly. For the AOb reason to be there to argue for in order not to reduce the number of staff in case of shrinkage, but to keep teachers redundant. "We also argued for this when there was still unemployment in primary education, but we already saw the shortage coming. Politics did not want to finance that. Let's learn from primary education and now retain teachers in secondary education that we so badly need. to have."
From 13.30 pm, the House of Representatives will hold a general consultation about the teacher policy.
