How to prevent the shortage of teachers?

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, there are 69 million teachers missing worldwide to achieve “universal basic education by 2030”. However, specifies Unesco, the Covid-19 crisis has given visibility to the teaching profession and as a result, the subject of the attractiveness of the profession, which already existed, has taken on importance.

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4,000 teaching posts are vacant this year in France, a figure on the rise but it is not better elsewhere.

In France, these unprecedented recruitment difficulties led the Ministry of Education to extend in November by two weeks the deadline for registering for competitions for the start of the 2023 school year.

Unesco was created on November 16, 1945 following the damage and massacres of the Second World War

Unesco was created on November 16, 1945 following the damage and massacres of the Second World War

In a report presented in June, the right-wing senator Gerard Languet had mentioned at European level “the attractiveness of the teaching profession” as “a general problem for countries, whatever the salary level”.

According to national estimates, for example, there will be a shortage of 25,000 teachers by 2025 in Germany, and 30,000 in Portugal by 2030.

 Germany, Portugal, Sweden and Italy are also facing “massive retirements, which will increase the problem”.

 In detail, at the elementary school level, 60% of teachers are over 50 in Italy, 37% in Germany, 42% in Portugal, 36% in Sweden and 23% in France, according to the OECD.

Pupils from a primary school in France observe a minute’s silence in memory of Samuel Paty, a history and geography teacher, who was stabbed to death and beheaded shortly after leaving his college in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine on 16 October 2020

Pupils from a primary school in France observe a minute’s silence in memory of Samuel Paty, a history and geography teacher, who was stabbed to death and beheaded shortly after leaving his college in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine on 16 October 2020

Different causes can be pointed out, according to Régis Malet, professor of education sciences at the University of Bordeaux: “the low level of wages, particularly in France, but also the deterioration of working conditions, status, and more symbolic dimension strongly felt, which is that of the lack of consideration, of recognition”.

In this part of the globe, according to Borhene Chakroun, the recruitment of teachers is “lower than current and projected needs, as 16.5 million additional teachers still need to be recruited by 2030”.

In the United States, we are witnessing an “unprecedented” crisis. At the end of August, the Washington Post spoke of a “catastrophic shortage”, explaining that the country “has never experienced such a serious situation”.

How to deal with this situation? Eric Topona asked the question to his guests:

-Hadiza Ndiaye , teacher at a vocational school in Kayes, western Mali.

A school for Ukrainian children in Dresden, eastern Germany

A school for Ukrainian children in Dresden, eastern Germany

-Alpha Amadou Bano Barry , sociologist and teacher-researcher at the University of Conakry. He was adviser in charge of higher education to the Presidency of the Republic of Guinea, then Minister of National Education and Literacy (MENA).

-Éric Charbonnier , analyst, education expert at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

-Dr Paul-Crescent Beninga , socio-political jurist. Founding President of the Central African Institute of Social Sciences and Management. Spokesperson for the Civil Society Working Group on the Central African Crisis. (GTSC)