Number of support staff in primary education is growing considerably

Tekst Joëlle Poortvliet - redactie Onderwijsblad - 23 april 2021 - 3 Minuten om te lezen

Picture: Type tank

The most recent personnel figures from DUO show the effect of the workload agreement. Since the 2018-2019 school year, schools have been allowed to structurally spend money to combat work pressure. With sufficient resources and if the team so wishes, they can opt for a teaching assistant.

From 2018, the share of support staff in primary schools will increase sharply. From 12 percent in 2017 to 17 percent in 2020. Of the more than 100 thousand full-time jobs at primary schools in the Netherlands, more than 17 thousand are now for educational support staff (oop).

More and more supporters in primary schools

Source DUO
* Teachers in training (LIO) and the 'unknown' category are not included in this overview, but are included in the total number of FTEs.

We make customization possible

Rosalinde Stins, chief driver at the AOb for oop, was a teaching assistant herself and is now a teacher supporter. Both functions are covered. The added value of a support worker in the classroom is evident, she says. “We are flexible and can take on many different tasks. We talk to children who get stuck. Separate groups that work faster or slightly slower. Actually, the assistants and supporters ensure that customization in education is possible. ”

Half days

Being a teaching assistant or support assistant is rarely a full-time job. Stins: “They often work half days.” The more than 17 FTEs are filled by almost 28 people, according to DUO figures. The number of full-time jobs for teachers - DUO calls this 'educational staff', which also includes, for example, IB students and gym teachers - has decreased slightly since 2018. This decrease seems to coincide with a slight decrease in the number of pupils in primary schools. The student-teacher ratio has been 18 for five years in a row, the implementing body calculates. Which doesn't say anything about the class size, by the way. Partly because DUO includes teachers who do not have their own classroom for the student-teacher ratio.

Supporters are increasingly hosting classes for longer periods

Loyal

Stins suspects that the OOPs partly mask the teacher shortage: “Between 2015 and 2020, the teacher shortage has become a problem at many schools. At the same time, I increasingly hear from fellow support staff that they provide classes for longer periods. Mind you: I understand that they do that: you are often very loyal, towards the students and colleagues. But of course it's not the intention. It doesn't solve the problem. In fact, it becomes invisible.”

Also the recently published inspection report State of education states that oops fill the gaps: “With a patchwork of solutions, schools try to fill the unfilled vacancies by, for example, expanding the working hours of part-timers, deploying substitutes, but also teaching assistants or lio students.”

Keep up

It is unclear on what scale this happens. The AOb - just like the House of Representatives - has wanted the Ministry of Education to keep track of figures about the teacher shortage and how schools solve it for much longer. Now there are only a few major cities that occasionally release data.

An adopted motion from 2019 by the SP, GroenLinks and the PvdA has still not been implemented by Education Minister Arie Slob. Eddy Erkelens, a teacher who voluntarily set up a deficit-tracking database, also stopped his efforts last year because, according to him, the promised support was lacking from the ministry to roll out the website nationwide.

Also read: 'Educational support staff often work outside their own range of duties'

And check: 'Calculate how much money your school will receive for work pressure reduction'