Teacher shortage in Hungary critical: tens of thousands are missing
Hungary’s public education has a “critical” shortage of teachers with 16,000 of them missing from the sector, the president of teachers’ union PSZ said on Thursday, ahead of the start of the school year.
Over the next five years, a total of 22,000 teachers are expected to be missing from the system overall, Tamás Totyik told a press conference. He said that although the government was familiar with those figures, it kept “speaking in glorifying terms” about how many young Hungarians were preparing to choose teaching as a career.
In PSZ’s estimate, close to 12,000 already retired teachers had been called back to ease the shortages in schools and many schools had chosen to employ people with no appropriate qualifications “to fill the gap”.
Totyik also cited the problem of fewer classes to be held than set in the curriculum due to a lack of qualified staff and financing in addition to the low wages of teachers.
He cited a fresh national survey showing 40 percent of students as being “functionally illiterate”, calling for an “emergency plan to turn around this catastrophic situation”.
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But I thought the government said everything was fine? What did Orban say today on Kossuth Radio? Mr. Totyik should go to prison for spreading fake news.
Functionally illiterate peopple are the easiest to direct with propaganda. Suits perfectly for Fidesz. I would not expect any quick improments to happen, unfortunately. Those teachers who can, are actively seeking alternative careers. I know a few they have said that many have switched away from school teaching or are actively pursuing a new direction in their career and will quit teaching as soon as they can.
Even before the new odorous law was put into place, we were experiencing shortages. At my school there were people teaching who had no degree because no proper teachers could be found.
There are plenty of qualified teachers, but who would work for the wage paid here? Amazingly we have lots of money for any “ethnic” Hungarians living outside Hungary, for schools and churches and what ever they want. They vote, they take our money, but they do not live here.
Ostanus has made an assessment of the intent of Fidesz that many of us have considered. Worse than that, however, is the blow the train wreck of the education system is going to make to Hungary’s economic future. Companies will not be able to fill positions requiring technical expertise and will have to resort to foreign workers to do it none of whom will come from Western countries due to the low pay offered. Hungary is and will be very low as a place to immigrate to for foreign talent and may only get the bottom of the barrel. It’s all a recipe for economic decline.
It’s a year on since this article was written and the situation is more dire. At the same time, though “we” teachers have had a 33% increase, this comes after 12 years of dis-investment where we had to fund the shortfall. We’re now nearly back to where we were a decade earlier, but with the incurred debts. And there’s NO light nor even a flicker from the government that they will do right by us. If anything, they trot the standard tropes of Brussels, evil this and that, etc., as to why there’s no dosh to fund education – and yet, there’s millions to fund those that promise to have a child in the next couple of years.
Instead, teachers are being told to “invent” incentive programs to reward themselves a small bit more, are being told to work 2 weeks more into the summer and somehow come up with more Phys Ed courses (even though many schools lack sufficient facilities)…