The holidays have been over for more than a month already! The students have returned to school. For the first time in the history of national education, the school year began at the end of August (August 29, 2022) and will end on July 7, 2023, for students from the Wallonia-Brussels Federation.
Despite the good news of the end of health restrictions in schools, the problem of teacher shortages is still not solved. Indeed, for several years, Belgium has been facing this shortage.
A Less and Less Popular Profession
Every school year, the same refrain: the shortage of teachers. This is one of the major issues in Belgian education. And yet, at first glance, the profession seems rather enviable: “Holidays in spades, twenty hours of face-to-face lessons, a rather enviable health plan and a more than adequate pension.” [1]
However, finding a teacher to replace a colleague has become a real obstacle course for management and the organizing powers.
How can this shortage be explained? This profession is no longer as popular as before: “Between teachers who take their early retirement (one in five) and those who leave prematurely (one in three), the profession suffers from a lack of career organization.” [2] A young freshly graduated teachers generally encounter problems finding a stable place in a school. He can also accumulate several replacement contracts before becoming a class holder and also being appointed for information purposes. This situation pushes the young teacher to give up and go to other horizons.
Students sometimes find themselves without teachers in certain courses for several weeks (or even months) and hours of lessons are ultimately not given. In some schools, the situation is even very worrying.
How to tackle the shortage of teachers?
The question would rather be: “How to attract young people again to choose the teaching profession? »
This must go through a revaluation of the teaching profession. To attract young people to this profession and keep them in the long term, several elements must be taken into account: reduction in the number of students per class, salary increase, better consideration of the work provided, support from management and parents, guaranteed tenure , etc. Information and promotion campaign for the profession would also be a good idea.
Investing in education means thinking about the world of tomorrow.
Sources :
[1] Le Soir (2022). Enseignement : le statut des profs est-il vraiment enviable ? Available HERE[2] Le Soir (2021). La pénurie de profs aggravée par l’abandon des jeunes. Available HERE
