The educators set alarm bells ringing: looming teacher shortage
Either there is a systematic change in the financing of the faculties of education or we might soon be dealing with the fact that there is nobody to teach our children. The conclusion was reached by the participants of the seminar on the undergraduate teacher training which was held on 14th June 2016 in the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic.
The funds that the state allocates to the faculties of education in the long term are insufficient to ensure their basic operation let alone any further developments. The situation in some of the faculties is said to be critical. The crisis cannot be handled from a short-time perspective but a long-term systematic change in the funding of the faculties of education is needed. That is the main conclusion drawn from the seminar that was attended by approximately thirty deans of faculties of education and other educators.
The participants of the seminar which was held under the auspices of the Deputy Prime Minister for Science, Research and Innovation and the Christian Democratic Party (KDU-ČSL) Chairman, Pavel Bělobrádek, and the Vice-Chairman of the Committee on Science, Education, Culture, Youth and Sports of the Chamber of Deputies, Jiří Mihola (KDU-ČSL), have agreed that teacher training with respect to the system of the so-called coefficient of economic demands (CED) is, in the long term, underfunded. According to the attending deans, each faculty of education obtains approximately 29,900 CZK per one student of Mathematics while the other, non-teaching, faculties will obtain 56,100 CZK for a student of the same field.
“The call for change by the faculties of education is getting stronger year after year. I will do my best to improve their situation. School is one of the key places where the future of our country is decided,” declared the deputy Jiří Mihola.
The seminar was hosted by the IKDP in cooperation with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung.
