Teacher Shortages: Between Knowledge and Political Decision-Making

António Teodoro

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We need to move from managing teacher shortages year by year to a national policy for rebuilding the teaching profession

Teacher shortages have long ceased to be a localised emergency. They are a structural problem within the Portuguese education system. And we cannot continue to treat them as though the problem starts afresh every year, with emergency measures to fill vacant teaching posts.

The figures are well known. The latest assessment by the DGEEC (Directorate-General for Education and Science Statistics) projects a need to recruit approximately 38,000 new teachers by the 2034/35 academic year, an average of 3,800 per year. The problem stems largely from the ageing teaching workforce and the insufficient number of new teachers entering the profession. But there is a more fundamental question: why has a profession of such social importance ceased to attract and retain sufficient numbers of professionals?

The answer lies not only in salaries. It also lies in working conditions, the intensification and bureaucratisation of teaching, the loss of professional autonomy, instability in teaching placements, difficulties in balancing professional and family life, and the deterioration of teachers' social standing. Research cited by the National Education Council has been identifying these factors for years.

Therefore, the first mistake would be to imagine that the solution is simply to open up the profession to anyone holding a degree in a scientific discipline. This may be a temporary response to an emergency. However, it cannot constitute a teacher education policy. Teaching is a complex profession that requires subject knowledge, pedagogical expertise, the ability to work with children and young people, and a thorough understanding of educational contexts.

Here too, we are not dealing with a problem that has not been diagnosed. For years, research has recommended an integrated policy encompassing initial teacher education, professional induction and continuing professional development. The National Education Council recently reiterated its support for institutionalising induction as a fundamental stage of professional development and a responsibility of the State. What is lacking, therefore, is not another assessment. What is missing is a long-term policy. Such a policy should rest on five pillars.

First, enhancing the value of the profession. This means improving working conditions, reducing bureaucracy, strengthening professional autonomy and making the career economically and socially attractive, particularly in its early stages. It also means creating conditions that allow teachers to remain in the profession without paying an excessive price in their personal lives.

Second, rebuilding initial teacher education. Portugal needs to rapidly expand its teacher education capacity, but without turning training into an emergency pathway. Teacher education provision must be planned according to the system's anticipated needs, while ensuring its academic and pedagogical quality.

Third, establishing a genuine continuum of professional development: initial teacher education, induction and continuing professional development. A newly qualified teacher should not simply be placed in a school and left to fend for themselves. They should receive support, mentoring and the conditions necessary to develop a strong professional identity.

Fourth, aligning teacher education with recruitment. The State knows the future needs by teaching subject area and geographical region. Higher education institutions know their teacher education capacity. Trade unions understand the professional realities of schools. Regulatory bodies understand accreditation processes. Why not bring all this knowledge together around the same table?

This brings us to the fifth pillar: establishing genuine national coordination for the teaching profession. The Ministry of Education, trade unions, universities, the National Education Council, teacher training centres and A3ES (Agency for Assessment and Accreditation of Higher Education) cannot continue to operate as separate worlds. The crisis calls for a form of pact on teacher education and the teaching profession, with multi-year targets, clearly defined responsibilities and public evaluation of results.

At this point, it is essential to discuss the role of A3ES. Quality assurance is necessary, but it must not become a mechanism that obstructs the system. During the 2010s, excessively rigid criteria and unsuitable training models contributed to the fragmentation of initial teacher education in universities. Today, there is a risk of returning to that approach by imposing a model based on 'didactic transposition' and a theory–placement–practice sequence that is theoretically outdated and incapable of responding to the complexities of contemporary teacher education. Regulation must not mean obstruction: accreditation must guarantee quality, but it must also recognise the public responsibility to train the teachers the country needs.

The current geographical imbalance clearly illustrates the problem: teacher education provision is more concentrated in central and northern Portugal, while the greatest teacher shortages are found, among other regions, in Lisbon, the Setúbal Peninsula and the Algarve. The Government itself acknowledged this mismatch when it introduced programme contracts with higher education institutions to strengthen teacher education. However, isolated contracts are no substitute for a policy aimed at training and renewing the teaching profession. Furthermore, some higher education institutions with the capacity and experience to provide teacher education were excluded from these contracts, without any publicly known reasons that would explain the decisions taken.

Meanwhile, there is still no deliberate policy to recruit new groups into the profession, capable of attracting young people from social backgrounds that are currently underrepresented among teachers. We need to bring more diversity into staffrooms, making teaching a more culturally diverse and representative profession that better reflects the plural composition of Portuguese society.

The Government recently approved new recruitment rules and measures to broaden the pool of candidates, including changes to teaching qualification requirements. These are understandable responses to the emergency. But the emergency cannot continue to determine the structure of the system. We need to move from managing teacher shortages year by year to a national policy for rebuilding the teaching profession.

Such a policy will only be possible through dialogue. Not the ritual dialogue between the Government and trade unions when a strike is approaching, nor the administrative consultation of universities when a decision has already been made. We need permanent institutional negotiation involving those who govern, those who represent teachers, those who educate future teachers and those who regulate the quality of that education.

The aim should not be to reach a consensus on everything. What matters more is establishing commitments on the essentials: how many teachers we need, where we need them, how we will train them, how we will support them at the beginning of their careers and what conditions we are prepared to guarantee to ensure they remain in the profession. If teacher shortages are, ultimately, a planning problem, they are above all a problem of trust. Trust in the profession, trust in teacher education institutions and trust in the State's ability to think about education beyond the next academic year.

Portugal already knows, to a large extent, what needs to be done. The challenge now is to turn accumulated knowledge into public policy. And to transform stakeholders who so often find themselves in opposition into partners sharing responsibility for rebuilding a profession on which the future of public education depends.

António Teodoro
Professor of Sociology and Education. Director of CeiED and the Institute of Education at Lusófona University

Source: Jornal Expresso