An EC report presents the current aspects of the teaching profession and provides suggestions on how to make it a more attractive career path.
The European Commission (EC) report ‘Teachers in Europe: Careers, Development and Well-being’ focuses on lower secondary teachers (ISCED 2) and provides evidence on policies and practices. It is based on Eurydice data on national legislation and on data from the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), which collects information on teachers’ practices and perceptions. The report covers all 27 EU Member States and 11 European countries, including Switzerland.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the essential role teachers play in our society and the stressful conditions they face on a daily basis. The profession of teaching has faced a vocational crisis in the last years, which has resulted in attracting fewer people and losing trained professionals. Therefore, new policies are needed in a number of areas to mitigate the shortage. In order to provide a picture of the status quo of teachers, the report analyses the working conditions of teachers, initial teacher education, teacher mobility and more. Considering the working conditions, the report shows that one third of teachers below 35 are on fixed-term contracts and that there is a general dissatisfaction among teachers regarding their salaries. In the Council conclusions on ‘European teachers and trainers for the future’ adopted on 26 May 2020, working conditions were identified as an essential element to improve the teaching profession. The report also underlines that the concept of teaching as a career needs to be upgraded. In fact, career progression is often defined in terms of salary increase. Teaching should stop being seen as an isolated profession with no career evolution, in order for it to be more attractive to young people.
Considering initial teacher education (ITE), almost all education systems in Europe require professional training to be included into the curriculum, along with academic subjects. However, less than 50% of teacher training include a form of career support scheme during their first period of employment. The report shows that effective support to new teachers has a positive impact on the attractiveness of the profession and on reducing the exit from the field. High quality ITE also betters the students’ learning outcomes. Therefore, policies should work on allowing new teachers to have an adequate transition into their new positions. Consensus from the collected data says that teachers’ education should not stop at ITE. Continuing professional development (CPD) for teachers is a crucial step for quality teaching and learning. Currently the main problem consists in teachers not having dedicated time for CPD, even though it is a statutory practice in most countries. The report indicates that teachers that have defined time for CPD participate in more training activities.
A further analysis shows that a low percentage of teachers participates in mobility programmes. In fact, in 2018 only 40.9% of teachers studied abroad during their training, with foreign language instructors being the most mobile (even then, about 30% of them had not taken part in an exchange). Individuals who went abroad during their ITE were much more likely to be mobile during their practical teacher training. Mobility has been proven to enhance teachers’ linguistic, intercultural and didactical competences. Therefore, there is a need to remove barriers to teacher transnational mobility.
The last analysed aspect was teachers’ overall wellbeing. Almost half of the teachers reported to have high levels of work related stress due to overwhelming administrative tasks, being held responsible for students’ (under)achievements and ever-changing requirements from authorities. In the previously cited Council conclusions, teachers’ well-being represents a key factor for the attractiveness of the profession. Policies should focus on augmenting career progression options in teaching and making CPD a precondition. In fact, education systems that are strong in these aspects reported teachers with lower levels of stress.
The EU has made it one of their main objectives to support teachers and trainers more efficiently, in order to achieve the European Education Area (EEA) by 2025. In fact, ‘Enhancing competences and motivation in the education profession’ is one of the five strategic priorities in the Council resolution ‘on a strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training towards the European Education Area and beyond (2021-2030)’. The document states that the well-being of teachers and trainers is an important factor for improving the quality of education and training. In the context of the Digital Education Action Plan, one of the goals of the Commission is to support digital transformation plans at all levels of education with Erasmus cooperation projects. One of these is the Erasmus+ Teacher Academies, which was officially launched under the new Erasmus+ Programme (2021-2027). The objective is to improve the attractiveness of the profession by developing and building a new European and international perspective to teacher education. Lastly, as cited in the EEA Communication from September 2020, the EC plans to introduce a European Innovative Teacher Award by 2021 to recognise the work of teachers and to display outstanding innovative teaching practices. The initiative will build on good practices like the eTwinning European prizes.