Just weeks before the start of the new academic year, it has been revealed that hundreds of teaching positions throughout Estonia remain to be filled, with some local governments having yet to even place advertisements for them.In Tallinn alone, students will arrive on their first day to more than 60 teacherless classes unless there is a dramatic last-minute rush of takers for the underpaid and undervalued positions. The Ministry of Education and Research have been forced into the rather pathetic admission - given the tasks they are charged with - that they are not even sure how many teachers they will be short come September 1st. Presumably they will find out when students start wandering corridors up and down the country in search of an educator.
In all fairness, the Ministry is caught between a rock and an entire range of hard places. The average age of serving teachers in the country is rapidly approaching 912, and as they die or are pensioned off, there is no next generation to replace them: anyone graduating in modern, go-get-'em Estonia inevitably goes on to study business administration, IT or something that will get them to Brussels, with tertiary education producing about 3 new teachers annually.
Not that you can blame the youngsters when there is no financial incentive to go into teaching, no fringe benefits and only rooms bursting at the seams with obnoxious pre-teens and teenagers to look forward to. If the government made the prospect of teaching more attractive, a few more people might give it a go. Alas, it's a vicious circle: the government doesn't have enough money to provide the incentives the profession needs if it's not to go into terminal meltdown within the next few years. Allegedly.
It's a perfectly fixable situation, of course, if someone takes the initiative, and as a former teacher myself I can vouch for how satisfying and enjoyable (if not exactly lucrative) a job teaching can be. But the role of educators is rarely shown the respect it deserves, anywhere. If nothing else, Estonia can take heart from the fact that it's probably not alone in having an education system facing imminent implosion.
6 comments:
Well, Estonia will have to do what every other country has had to do: FIND A WAY TO PAY FOR TEACHERS AND OFFER TEACHERS INCENTIVES. IN America, teachers are paid decently considering how much vacation time they get, and teachers get outstanding benefit packages (what that means for people living outside the U.S. is that if a teacher needs to see a doctor because s/he is ill, s/he can and s/he will not have to take out a second mortgage on her/his home to do it -- those of us without benefits can't afford to see doctors . . . EVER).
Yes, but, well, medical care is free in Estonia anyway...
Yeah, I know, so I guess that can't be an incentive, unless, unless . . . they make everyone in Estonia pay for medical care EXCEPT TEACHERS! Then people will start teaching!
They could just start paying them better I suppose. Halve the salaries of everyone who works for the government, as they're all overpaid to buggery anyway, and spend what that produces on teachers.
That pic is SPECTACULAR!!! I love the writing on the board. WHere did you find it? Or did you make it? You are such a little technological whiz kid!
The picture I found on the net, but there was nothing on the board, so I added the text myself. Doesn't the little girl just look perfectly miserable? :-)
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