Perciun: The Shortage of Staff Is Not 2,000 Teachers, but Four Times More

In an interview for Europa Liberă, Education and Research Minister Dan Perciun said that the number is actually four times higher. Vacancies are filled by retirees or pedagogues who teach several subjects. Instead of teaching 18 hours, which is the pedagogical staff’s norm, teachers have 27 hours per week, covering the shortage with overload. As long as salaries remain unattractive in education system, the opportunity to work more gives people the chance to have a higher salary, so there is a certain dislike for young professionals because their arrival at school could mean fewer hours for those already working there, Dan Perciun said. The Education Ministry aims to attract at least 500 teacher graduates to schools each year. Currently, out of about 1,000 graduates, less than 25% work in schools. The ministry plans to introduce a minimum average score of 7 for admission to pedagogical universities in order to raise the prestige of the profession, raise scholarships to the level of the minimum wage and change the mechanism of granting allowances to novice teachers. As it was reported earlier, the educational institutions from Chisinau municipality will start the school year with a shortage of teachers. The Main Department of Education, Youth and Sport asked the Ministry of Education to send 547 specialists, but so far only 80 new teachers have been employed.