Teacher shortage especially a Randstad problem: report

The massive primary school teacher shortage in the Netherlands seems to be mainly limited to the big cities in the west of the country, according to figures from benefits agency UWV that newspaper Trouw requested. There are enough, or even more than enough, teachers in the north, east, and south of the Netherlands, the newspaper writes.

As you get farther away from the big cities, it becomes easier and easier to fill vacancies. Outside the Randstad there are still more teachers than there are jobs available, and some teachers even struggle to find work.

In theory, the teacher shortage can be solved by spreading the available teachers across the country. But in practice that is hard to achieve. Teacher salaries are the same in the big cities as in smaller towns, but housing in the big cities are much more expensive. At the start of the holiday, Amsterdam primary schools still had over 300 open vacancies. Another problem is that not all teachers are the main breadwinner in the family, and their partners' jobs also have to be taken into account.

Last month primary school council PO-Raad warned that some 1,300 vacancies threaten to remain unfilled when schools reopen after the summer holidays. Then it was already clear that the problem was biggest in the big cities, but how big the differences are is a new revelation.