Too few teachers are examined in almost all subjects – Sydsvenskan

Just a few subjects – Swedish, sports and mathematics – has a reasonable balance between supply and demand. A range of topics are teaching needs that are many times greater than the number of graduates teachers.

See also: Competent teachers missing at more than five teaching jobs

The numbers are not exact. The number of graduates teachers are safe, but future needs are difficult to quantify. The bars in the graphic above must be read as an indication of what substances where one can expect that the shortage will become even larger in the coming years.

Overall, about 8 000 new teachers enter the labor market every year. The Agency has estimated the need to double. Employment Service indicate teachers as the greatest shortage profession of all. University Chancellor’s Office has previously concluded that vocational, recreational and subject teachers are training with the greatest need in the future.

University Chancellor’s Office, UKA, unveiled on Wednesday an additional way to quantify teacher shortage. The Authority has compared the number of teacher graduates in various subjects, with the number of hours that the subject fills in the school timetable.

– Then we see that subjects such as handicrafts, art, music and home economics are tiny in teacher education but fills much in the timetable, says Fredrik Svensson, a statistician at UKA which has developed the numbers.

The school’s timetable is nationally regulated and schools may deviate from the . A student is guaranteed almost 7000 hours of instruction in primary schools. The subject of Swedish to fill nearly 1,500 of those hours, 230 hours of music, the NO-agents 800 hours, and so on.

NO and SO substances have as much space in the timetable, but three times more training to SO-teacher. In civics, however, the imbalance large, and may cause problems in itself. The timetable specifies just how much social subjects a student to get, not how much of each SO-topic. Today trained five times as many teachers in the history of geography.

– It could mean that there will be a lot more of history than geography teaching. And it was probably not what the idea was, says Fredrik Svensson.

He thinks the political discussion about the teacher shortage have focused a bit too much on science substances.

– We must also talk about other topics. Studying biology and chemistry has the highest proportion of qualified teachers in high school under the Education Administration. But in crafts is a major difference between timetable and graduated teachers. In the long run, I think it will lead to imbalances.

By the numbers want University Chancellor’s Office raise the question of a different design of teacher training programs, so that the number of training places more consistent with the need.

– If the subject of Swedish has 23 percent of the time schedule, so you would think that it would be appropriate that corresponded to the percentage of graduates of teacher education.

The universities have commissioned to design training programs both for students’ demand and labor market needs. Assessments made by this system, says this essentially functions well, with two exceptions: nursing programs and teacher training.

– We need a debate on this. We can not just be content to observe that it is not working. With this basis, we want to kick-start such a discussion, says Fredrik Svensson.