Teacher shortage: Limiting educational offer is an option, Council says

The Education Council said that limiting the educational offer could be considered to cope with the persistent teacher shortage. School students will have fewer hours of lessons, while teachers’ hours remain the same, so they have more scope.

“There are often concerns in Dutch education about the overload of the educational offer and the great social expectations of schools,” the council wrote in a study. “With social issues, the reflex is quick that education must contribute to the solution - certainly also from the political side. Think of lessons about healthy food to combat obesity, financial education, attention to radicalization, and efforts in the context of poverty policy.”

Parents also have additional expectations. However, education cannot take on everything, according to the advisory body. “Currently, there is a lack of awareness in politics and society of what can reasonably be expected of education,” the council continued. But the schools also profile themselves with extra offers to attract students. And teachers often experience societal expectations as orders “when they are not.”

“Limiting the educational offer at school to compensate for a teacher shortage only works if the teaching time for students is also reduced,” the council said. “Teaching time for teachers remains the same, or at least increases to a much lesser extent, so that the (more limited) educational offer can be provided with the available number of teachers.” The council stressed that it “emphatically does not have a ready-made plan” in the advisory document.

A combination of limiting the offer, reducing the lesson time, and extra efforts from others could also be possible. “Then, for example, students go to school for four days, and there’s a program at school on the fifth day, but that is not part of the educational offer,” the council said. “This does not have to be provided by qualified teachers, nor does it necessarily have to be mandatory or available for all students.”

The shortages are unevenly distributed, but it should be a matter for all schools to combat inequality of opportunity for the children. “So don’t praise yourself as a school or board if you don’t (yet) suffer from shortages, but show solidarity and come to the aid of the schools and boards that do have to deal with it,” said chairman Edith Hooge.