Recruitment of teachers is a growing problem in a number of European countries. Many teachers will be retiring within the next five to ten years and it is difficult for the teaching profession to recruit enough qualified teachers to meet the demand.
At the same time, the trend shows that more teachers are leaving the job after a few years. Already the teaching profession must compete for a shrinking pool of young talent, at a time when the attractiveness of school-level teaching as a career is declining.
Teachers are typically being asked to do more work for less reward. Salaries are failing compared with other professions, while our knowledge-based societies are placing new demands on teachers’ abilities, such as mastering IT as part of their core teaching requirements. Faced with these and other problems, ensuring there will be enough professional teachers to educate all children becomes an issue of major importance in many EU Countries, including Malta. The proposed retirement age is also a grave problem. Most teachers will be burnt out after at least 25 years’ service, let alone at the age of 65!
The present situation in Malta does not augur well. The government needs to act now before it is too late to make the profession more attractive. The European Commission estimates that within the next ten years, the EU needs to attract one million new qualified teachers just to replace the retiring teachers. EU figures also indicate the great majority of teachers retire from their profession as soon as they are offered an opportunity to do so.
This is not yet happening in great numbers in Malta, but latest figures indicate that around 15 teachers a year opt to leave teaching and choose another profession. This number will definitely increase if the stress on teachers continues to blow up due to low status, bad reputation/publicity, limited career possibilities, the ever increasing demands on teachers, poor working conditions and low salaries.
If the profession does not attract new teachers and retain those already in schools, Malta will suffer from a serious lack of teachers, and subsequent employment of untrained teachers in most schools. History will repeat itself and Malta will go back to the times when untrained personnel were engaged to teach: during the 70s and early 80s, hundreds of young people were impeded from entering University due to the infamous “numerus clausus” and now that the University of Malta has its doors wide open to accommodate anyone who wants to further his/her studies, we have a serious problem of human resources.
The current figures of students at the Faculty of Education is a cause for concern. Only 130 students are registered for a B.Ed (Hons) in the primary sector, meaning that an average of 42 new Primary School Teachers will be available each year in the coming four years. This is a very serious situation. In addition to the general problem of attracting and retaining qualified teachers, Malta, like other EU countries has difficulties attracting male students to the profession. It is to be pointed out that only nine (9) out of the 130 students referred to above are males. It is a fact that males are no longer attracted to the teaching profession and it is envisaged that males will eventually disappear altogether!
293 females and 110 males are presently pursuing their studies at the Faculty of Education to join the teaching profession in the secondary sector. Even here, the situation is not at all reassuring. The number of teachers for the Sciences, Information and Communications Technology and Computer Studies is alarming. To add to all this there are only 76 females and 29 males undergoing the Post Graduate Course in Education.
One has to bear in mind that an average of 10 teachers a month retire on pension, others seek to be medically boarded out, others are completely burnt out, some opt to seek alternative employment and many others just resign. The Education Directorate had to engage supply teachers, particularly in the primary sector to fill in the gaps. As a consequence the employment of untrained teachers in schools will have a negative effect on the quality of teaching and will definitely have serious consequences in relation to the students’ benefit from education. So it is vital that the profession can recruit and retain qualified teachers.
Some countries already face the challenge concerning dormant teachers (those inactive or working outside the profession). The Malta Union of Teachers has been literally begging government to introduce “reduced hours” for teachers. The Reform Agreement signed between the MUT and Government last July 2007 stipulates that College Principals may procure the service of Relief Teachers for a number of hours per week so as to replace class/subject teachers when necessary. Such relief teachers may include retired teachers or educators who are on parental leave. Yet, nothing has so far materialised.
The Danish Minister of Education has established a corps of role models to attract young people to teacher education. Forty student-teachers and newly qualified teachers will work as ambassadors for teacher education in schools and in the local community. The task is among other things to put teacher education and teaching on the agenda through stories about professional teachers. This is the way forward and Malta should follow this example.
What about the teachers we have in post? Are we encouraging them to remain in their profession and supporting them? Or are we only interested in inspecting and scrutinising their work, giving importance only to “league tables” that contravene the core value of respect for each student, irrespective of their achievement in the school leaving exam? Why is it that teachers mainly in their fifties are desperate to get out? Have we all realised that employers should acknowledge that teaching is a potentially stressful occupation?
There are instances when teachers feel undervalued, overburdened and powerless to do anything about it. Female teachers especially suffer as a result of conflict between the excessive demands of work and home. What are we doing to control pupil indiscipline, workload and bullying? When are we going to realise that a reduction of class sizes would have the most immediate effect across the system for better providing all students with the key competences? Large classes make it more problematic for the teacher to maintain an adequate disciplinary climate and the consequent heavy workload undermines their capacity for innovation.
There are a lot of teachers suffering in silence – a case in point occurred a few weeks ago when teachers at Naxxar Boys’ Secondary were driving out of school, with students gathered outside the school hurling objects at their cars, uttering vulgar words, trying to enter their cars, blocking the flow of traffic by dropping to the floor. Teachers have also reported they are harassed and bullied after school hours and during weekends by students living close to their private residence.
The MUT is determined to initiate a crusade to halt this nonsense. Teachers are workers like anybody else and they are entitled to teach in an atmosphere of serenity and peace. The MUT is calling on all employers to remove unacceptable work related stress and provide healthy workplaces for all teaching grades. Work stress can seriously affect quality of life and is the cause of much sickness absence and teachers leaving the profession. Things are now getting completely out of control and, no wonder, then, the recruitment and retention of teachers is becoming the topic of the day.
Head teachers and teachers in Malta are amongst the best in Europe but they cannot continue to experience a weakening of confidence from their superiors in the professional work they carry out. They work hard and long hours far beyond the number of schooling hours. If they do not report for work during the summer recess when they are supposed to be on vacation leave, schools will not reopen in September. They deserve a better remuneration as their responsibilities at school are endless.
To this end, the MUT held a series of meetings with the Prime Minister, the Principal Permanent Secretary and the former Minister of Education. Government registered its intention to address this situation in the Reform Agreement. On 1 February 2008, the then Minister of Education and Industrial Relations confirmed Government’s intention to accede to the negotiation of an addendum to the said agreement. The recent Reform Agreement will only become “historic” when the necessary changes take place in the classrooms, as it is the teacher who knows his students best and is better equipped to decide which methods to use to create an optimal learning situation.
It is only when all this is achieved that more youngsters will decide to choose teaching as a professional career and that retention of present teachers be secured.

John Bencini is President of the Malta Union of Teachers