2023-09-18
National Audit Office assessed the identification of the need for teachers and the measures to attract them
Measures to attract teachers are being taken at the state and municipal level, but not enough new teachers are entering schools. The National Audit Office has assessed ensuring the need for teachers and notes that data on the need for teachers is not complete and the effectiveness of measures to attract teachers is not assessed, so those that create more value are not identified.
"The identified need for teachers varies at national, municipal and school level. The national projections for 2018 and 2021 lacked data on student specialisations and current demand and did not consider factors such as the restructuring of the education network or the declining number of children. According to school data, between 2023 and 2024, there will be a shortage of teachers for 1 389 teaching positions, a third of which being in Vilnius", says audit team leader Eivida Šlamė.
An increasing number of municipalities (24 in 2020, 39 in 2022) have measures in place to attract teachers, but only 5 of the 39 plan to evaluate their effectiveness to select the most effective ones. Municipalities and schools compete with each other to attract teachers who are already working in other schools, which does not address the shortage of teachers.
Teachers' average salaries have been increasing every year since 2019. Teachers aged under 25 are paid more than the national average because of financial incentives, while teachers aged 50 and over are paid more because of their seniority and qualifications. Teachers aged 25-49 earned less than the national average, while those aged 25-34 earned the least of all teachers, which is one of the reasons why it is more difficult to keep them in schools.
Support for pedagogical studies has encouraged enrolment, but the priority support in 2022 and 2023 did not change the choice of pedagogical specialisations at the first cycle: the largest share of enrolments in priority specialisations was in primary education and special education, while only a few students chose science education. Pre-school and pre-primary education are popular among students, although there is no support for these specialisations.
The results of the assessment show that the attractiveness of pedagogical studies is increasing, with a 3-fold increase in the number of students choosing to study pedagogy in three years (2019-2022). In 2023, a higher proportion of those enrolled in first cycle state-funded places chose priority specialisations (78% in universities and 42% in colleges). Professional studies in pedagogy and retraining of teachers are the most popular ways of acquiring a teaching profession and additional specialisation (58% of all graduates and trainees of pedagogical studies in 2023). Professional studies in pedagogy make an important contribution to meeting the demand for subject teachers.