Even though not everyone has started to post vacancies for teachers, it is obvious that certain cities still lack certain specialists – sometimes even the measures of promotion and attraction of young people applied by individual municipalities do not help.
News portal lrytas.lt interviewed representatives of the municipalities admit that the situation remains difficult, but not yet tragic – the heads of some schools are said to be able to persuade them to keep teachers who have reached retirement age for at least another year, while others continue to try to work with what they have.
The situation in big cities is different
As a portal lrytas.lt Gabrielius Grubinskas, the representative of the Vilnius city municipality, stated that at the beginning of the next academic year, the capital will tentatively lack a little more than 500 teachers and student support specialists. About 100 of them are teaching assistants and speech therapists.
“From subject teachers, the greatest expected need will be Lithuanian language (about 60), elementary education and mathematics (about 50 each) teachers. The current situation is very similar to what it was last year.
It should be borne in mind that the current calculations are preliminary, taking into account the retirement age of specialists, the normal turnover of employees, etc. Due to the lack of specialists, recruitment of employees is announced – for example, we currently have 296 job advertisements for educational institutions”, explained G. Grubinskas.
According to the representative of the Vilnius city municipality, in order to attract the missing specialists, the capital also offers additional benefits – for example, supplements for teachers starting to work in Vilnius and a free public transport ticket.
At that time, the representative of the Kaunas City Municipality, Rasa Markauskaitė, informed that the education process in Kaunas is smooth so far, but a few more educational support specialists are being sought.
“More detailed information about the need for teachers is being collected and will be known in the second half of August. According to August of last year, Kaunas was looking for about half a dozen pedagogues in schools and about the same number in pre-school educational institutions.
About 30 percent these positions consisted of part-time positions. The wanted positions have been filled”, emphasized R. Markauskaitė.
At that time, the head of the Communications Department of the Klaipėda City Municipality Administration. specialist Silvija Mockuvienė said that the need for teachers for the month of September will be clarified at the end of this academic year, when it will be clearer to the heads of institutions how many teachers plan to stop teaching.
According to data from January, three Klaipėda gymnasiums are currently looking for Lithuanian language and mathematics teachers, and two more pro-gymnasiums are looking for ethics and geography teachers.
According to S. Mockuvienė, last year before September 1, Klaipėda’s general education schools lacked a total of 24 pedagogues.
People are also trying to be lured in by promotional means
Silvija Sėrikovienė, head of the Education Department of Panevėžys municipality, to the portal lrytas.lt indicated that currently the biggest problem in the city’s educational institutions are mathematics teachers. According to her, at least one specialist in this subject would probably be accepted by every school in Panevėžys.
“Here is the biggest drawback. Probably, each school would accept one at a time, because now most mathematics teachers in schools work part-time and with an increased workload”, S. Sėrikovienė explained.
According to the head of the Education Department, schools are already talking more loudly about the lack of natural science, physics, and chemistry teachers.
“Primary teachers would probably go next – there are several schools that will definitely be looking for them from September 1.” And then there would probably be geography teachers and music teachers, but not so many.
But the biggest pain in the city of Panevėžys today is still the math teachers”, emphasized S. Sėrikovienė.
In order to attract more young specialists to schools, the municipality approved the program for missing teachers and provided special scholarships, and the city is also determined to finance retraining, pay for young people’s studies and even moving costs.
“But it’s not very effective because there are not enough people learning the things we need.” This is the biggest problem at the state level – that it is not the municipality that cannot attract something, but that there is nothing to attract.
The surrounding municipalities have already been called, one other pedagogue has been invited to study with us, because we certainly cover the costs of moving, and we have also planned to pay part of the housing rent,” said the representative of the Panevėžys municipality.
S. Sėrikovienė admits that the lack of teachers is not only a problem for Panevėžys, but also for the whole country, because, as far as she knows, more than one municipality looks “to the neighbors”. According to her, not wanting to lose good pedagogues, school leaders try in every way to keep specialists who are already able to retire at work.
“Our seniors who are still active are truly loved and respected by their leaders. If you are active, if you are still thinking about leaving or not, the manager will certainly tend to motivate the person to stay for another year until he finds a replacement”, explained the head of the Education Department of the Panevėžys municipality.
The number of children is also decreasing
Darius Rekis, head of the Education, Culture and Sports Department of the Akmene district municipality, said that the municipality keeps statistics on the number of pedagogues every year – according to him, the number of missing teachers is not dramatic, but there are still vacancies.
“I know that teachers in one school simply moved elsewhere, changed jobs, went to other schools. So far, 7 teachers are missing, but until now we solved this matter, we found the teachers we needed”, explained D. Rekis.
According to him, 20 pedagogues who are of retirement age are working in the district today. This year, 6 more teachers reached this age.
“Of course, we are happy that those educators remain at the workplace and are not in a hurry to take a well-deserved rest. The requirement of the National Education Agency to offer French from 2025, which has not been in the district, is worrying.
If that demand persists, we will look for a decision to make here. The easiest way to deal with the shortage of pre-school and primary education teachers is that there was a turnover of them, but we managed to find them, even though this turnover is permanent”, said the representative of the Akmenė district municipality.
As D. Rekis recalled, there was a shortage of teachers in the city at the beginning of 2022, when many Ukrainian children arrived in Lithuania due to the war in Ukraine, but this challenge was relatively easily overcome.
“Then retired teachers helped, in some schools they joined the educational process because it was an extra case. Then the need passed, two years passed, the students integrated and it was resolved in that period. I believe that directors may be trying to invite retirees, but usually those who have decided to take a well-deserved rest are not inclined to return,” he said.
Aurimas Laužadis, the head of the Education Department of the Rokiškis district municipality, said that the situation regarding pedagogues in the district is not tragic – last September, several teachers were missing in some schools, but they were found.
“Since we are running a teacher recruitment program, we asked the schools to provide data on which specialists are lacking. If people come from elsewhere and get a job with us, they can apply for housing compensation – up to 25 thousand euros over five years, or 5 thousand euros per year. We also compensate retraining costs – 2 thousand euros for two years”, said A. Laužadis.
Unfortunately, as the representative of the Rokiškis district municipality admitted, such a measure bears little fruit.
“We welcome those who want to retrain, but only one person comes in three years,” he said.
According to A. Laužadis, the schools of Rokiškis today lack Lithuanian language and literature, mathematics teachers, psychologists, special pedagogues, physics and chemistry teachers.
True, the specialist singled out another problem – it is said that not only the number of teachers is decreasing in the district, but also the children themselves.
“Students are decreasing in all rural areas. In general, the shortage of teachers will become apparent later, after another five years,” thought the head of the Education Department of the Rokiškis district municipality.
