Urgent: Free Masters in Teaching – David Erlich

This is the second of a trio of chronicles in which I propose measures to combat the problem of teacher shortages.

The ones I exposed last week constituted the first axis: encouraging a return to the profession. I reiterate: this front should not be underestimated. Between 1999 and 2011, the number of teachers in the public sector stabilized at around 150,000 – 160,000. Between 2012 and 2015, it fell to 121,000. Since then, it has increased every year, but now stands at 131 133, we still have 20,622 fewer teachers than we had in 2011. We have a community duty to look for these teachers and bring them back.

Let’s now move on to the second axis: promoting the recruitment of new teachers.

Rounding to the thousands, let’s give a brief portrait of the problem we collectively face. Between 2003 and 2007, the annual number of graduates from teacher training courses was sometimes 5,000 and sometimes 6,000. In 2008 it was 4,000 and, between 2009 and 2013, it fell to 3,000 per year. Between 2014 and 2018 it was 2000, until reaching its lowest point in the last two decades in 2019… with 1448 graduates. Going through periods of governance of different party colors, the painful trend between 2003 and 2019 requires a realization: quantitatively, teacher training has been a sick training.

It is true that, between 2019 and 2022, three years of increase were recorded for the first time in the last two decades, but it is a timid increase: in 2022, 1674 teachers were trained, when. in 2005, there were 5965. According to a study by NOVA SBE, around 30,000 teachers will be needed by 2030. This means that, until then, we need to train around 3500 teachers per year. We are less than halfway! What to do to change this?

Dynamic Linking, a measure taken by the previous government that embodied the greatest fight against teaching insecurity of the century. XXI in Portugal, as well as the return to a model of paid internships, were measures in this direction. It could also be an intervention in the career structure that makes the first ranks more attractive (a topic on which there is some programmatic convergence between the two largest political parties).

There will be other measures, of course. What I propose now, however, is as simple as it is impactful: making master’s degrees in teaching free. I cannot conceive of a more direct, comprehensive and emblematic action than this: setting the annual tuition fee for master’s degrees in teaching at the amount of… zero Euros.

In a sense, this is about correcting an imbalance: while integrated master’s degrees (to be an architect, nurse or psychologist, for example) have a maximum fee ceiling equal to that of a degree, that is, €697 per year, this does not This happens in master’s degrees in teaching. If there are institutions that apply this amount, others charge a fee of almost double the undergraduate fee. And, if we look at the data I presented above about the drop in the number of graduates, there is a hypothesis that is worth thinking about: the fact that initial teacher training has ceased to be a component of the degree (the so-called educational branch), to become a master’s degree that is not even integrated, with a separate application, registration and payment process, may have introduced a negative factor in student motivation to follow this route.

Making master’s degrees in teaching free would be the opening of a highway where the system, inadvertently, seems to have built a wall.

Estimated cost: seven million Euros per year, to be transferred from the State to universities. That is: 0.00004% of GDP. The bet seems obvious to me.