Fewer teaching vacancies than last year
The job vacancy website Meesterbaan has remarkably fewer vacancies this year than last year. The platform itself thinks of corona as a possible cause.
picture: Type tank
Meesterbaan has traditionally mainly published vacancies for teachers in secondary education. At the request of the Education magazine The company compared the newly posted teaching job vacancies, across all education sectors, from that year to last year:
| 2019 | 2020 | difference | |
| April | 3010 | 2663 | -12 percent |
| May | 2754 | 1919 | -30 percent |
| July | 1733 | 988 | -43 percent |
Tim Roos works as an account manager for Meesterbaan. He has seen the number of teaching vacancies increase since 2015. This is the first year of decline. Roos: “We don't have an explanation for this yet. Only the assumption that corona entails an uncertain situation, so that the priority was no longer with recruiting new teachers. Schools were simply too busy with other things. We are of course working on further investigating this. ”
Formation around
With the exception of Rotterdam, so far this summer, no reports have appeared in (local) media about school management who are at a loss due to staff shortages. The private facebook group POinAction last week polled her followers with the question: How are the formation? The reactions give an impression. Although it is unclear whether the voters are representative of the sector. And whether several staff members of the same school have completed the poll.
- Of the 2830 voters (as of 24 August 2020):
- 2503 had completed the formation;
- had 150 not completed the team, classes were merged there, or other creative solutions were found;
- 90 did not complete the formation;
- 83 people saw challenges coming;
- and 4 people indicated that temporary workers are needed.
Hidden vacancies
Arnold Jonk, director of the Amsterdam foundation Samen between Amstel en IJ (STAIJ) recognizes that there are fewer vacancies. He suspects that fewer teachers have left this spring. Jonk was interviewed for the new Education Magazine, which was published in early September AObmembers is on the mat. “But”, warns Jonk, “you have to be careful when drawing conclusions and look very carefully at the hidden vacancies in particular. You know that schools are always looking for solutions, for example by increasing class sizes or less qualified teachers. That entails quality questions. ”
Maybe we should just pop it once
Cordula Rooijendijk also sees this. She kept a diary for a year about her experiences as headmaster of Montessori School de Amstel. In the Parool she said last week about schools that invisibly solve the teacher shortage. 'We should stop doing that, so that the problem really becomes visible. Maybe we should just pop it once. (…) The tricky thing is: anyone who has a heart for the profession does not want to let it get that far. When you send a class home, children from families with a difficult home situation suffer the most. The inequality of opportunity between children is thus increasing, and that worries me deeply. And yes, to prevent that you do everything you can to keep a class at school.'
You can read the full interview with Arnold Jonk and everything about the teacher shortage in the next issue of the Education Magazine.
