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A total of 3,174 teachers work in Klaipėda, of which around 1,519 work in Klaipėda schools and around 1,655 in pre-school educational institutions.
2020 70 teachers of retirement age have completed their pedagogical work in Klaipėda, and this year another 85 teachers of retirement age plan to leave schools in the port city.
According to Simona Šliogerienė, chief specialist of the education department of the Klaipėda city municipality, currently the situation due to the lack of teachers in the Klaipėda city schools is not yet critical, but the situation is more complicated in the institutions preschool education.
Currently, there is a shortage of pre-school education institutions in Klaipėda: 22 pre-school teachers (14 for full-time work, 8 for temporary work), 4 pre-school education teachers, 2 non-formal education (physical education) teachers and 2 speech therapists.
Viktė Radavičiūtė, deputy director of education at Klaipėda Kindergarten Linelis, also confirmed the difficult situation regarding the lack of specialists in preschool education. He assured that it is extremely difficult to find specialists such as speech therapists who want to work in the port city.
“There is a lack not only of preschool teachers, but also of specialists such as speech therapists. I had to deal with such a problem that it is not even possible to find them because there are no real specialists. It is a bit easier with preschool teachers, because in any case, after announcing the selection, another candidate appears ”, said V. Radavičiūtė.
According to the interlocutor, it is usually necessary to look for specialists for temporary work by signing a fixed-term work contract, because when a worker is released on paternity leave, they have to find a shift.
“We will look for a speech therapist from September and I think we will face the problem that there will be nothing to choose from, so we will use straw.
However, in order to have no one to work for, preschool teachers still have to cope. We are finding teachers, but there is definitely not much offer ”, assured the interlocutor.
V. Radavičiūtė said that when looking for employees, you also have to apply for university and college, and students also have jobs.
“I ask the final year students to pass the information that we are looking for specialists and it appears to each other that they get a job. We recently hired a young teacher who just graduated. In this way professionals can be discovered. We are trying to develop specialists and we still hope that this specialty will become more popular, ”said V. Radavičiūtė.
Predict a difficult future
The general education schools in Klaipeda City currently lack 28 teachers: 8 primary school teachers (7 full-time, 1 temporary job), 6 Lithuanian language and literature teachers, 4 mathematics (3 full-time, 1 temporary job ), 2 English teachers, 2 short stories, 2 physics teachers, 1 chemistry, biology, music and information technology teacher.
It is also difficult to meet the need for teachers in Russian language schools due to the lack of a teacher for primary education, history, music and physics.
When asked what strategic actions are planned in Klaipėda to attract as many teachers or students as possible to the port city who choose pedagogical studies, S. Šliogerienė assured that the Municipality, by encouraging young people to work in pedagogical work, partially pays for recycling studies.
“Last year, 12 teachers were compensated for preschool teacher training. Approximately 100 teachers are retrained at Vytautas Magnus University free of charge according to the EU project.
In order to solve the problem of teacher shortage in Klaipėda, a program has been prepared and implemented for training, developing qualifications, improving professional skills and attracting teachers to Klaipėda schools by 2020- 2024 ”, said S. Šliogerienė.
Jurgita Rakauskienė, director of the Klaipėda Baltic Gymnasium, assured that there is still no shortage of teachers in the gym, but looking ahead, a serious problem is expected.
“When we looked for teachers and learned what was missing, we certainly did not face big problems, but looking to the future and estimating the age of teachers who will one day go on vacation is the hardest part with science, physics, chemistry and math.
If now a physics professor were to be found in Klaipeda, it can be said that a mission is impossible.
It is a challenge for school leaders to find specialists in certain subjects, ”taught J. Rakauskienė.
Živilė Kiškionytė, director of the Klaipėda Vėtrungė Gymnasium, also spoke about the sad prospects for the future. He said there is no teacher shortage this year, but there will be a teacher shortage in the future.
“This year we are looking for a single tech teacher. But the teachers are older and I think there will be a huge shortage in a few years. This year our gym will continue to perform quite well, but in the future I really see there will be a huge shortage, because the young people just don’t come, ”said the director.
The interviewee assured that she is looking for specialists among the students.
“The gym cannot promise something exceptional for young specialists, this problem is already at the state level. But we are looking for young people, still students. We had hired a student who stayed to work for us as a teacher after graduating from university, ”Ž said. Kiškionytė.
There is also a lack of teachers in the Klaipeda district.
This year, 28 pedagogues leave 12 educational institutions in the Klaipėda district. Most of the basic schools of the basic schools of Agluonėnai and Kretingalė – 4 each, from the gymnasium Priekulė I. Simonaitytė – 3, from other educational institutions – 1-2 teachers each.
Therefore, the Klaipeda district schools lack mathematics, physics, biology, information technology, preschool education, primary classes, Russian, Lithuanian. Professionals. However, according to representatives of the Klaipėda district municipality, it is possible to find the missing specialists before September 1 of each year.
As the main incentive to find missing teachers for educational institutions, the Klaipėda district municipality highlighted partial funding for teacher trips to educational institutions.
To address the teacher shortage, teacher training is also encouraged. The Klaipėda District Municipality has signed ten tripartite agreements with educational institutions and teachers.
The contracts impose obligations on the teacher who will retrain and continue working in that educational establishment. Then this year, 3 district teachers will study at ISM and 3 more will have completed their studies.
Salaries of education support specialists will increase
Starting in September, the salaries of education support specialists will increase. The official salary of education support specialists (special educators, speech therapists, deaf educators, typologists, except those working in educational support institutions) will increase on average by 25 percent.
Assistants to psychologists, psychologists, social pedagogues, educational support specialists working in educational support institutions: an average of 22 percent.
“We proposed to improve the remuneration of education support specialists in order to increase the attractiveness of this profession and create the preconditions for an effective inclusive education, so that all students in educational institutions receive the necessary support”, said the Minister of Education, Science and Sports Jurgita. Šiugždinienė.
The salaries of education support professionals will be equal to those of teachers. For them, as for teachers, the coefficients of the fixed part of the official salary will be determined more in accordance with their teaching experience.
This will create opportunities to motivate professionals to work more and stay in the educational system.
Like teachers, education support professionals will have a fixed salary ratio due to the complexity of their activities when working in general education schools with students with high or very high special educational needs.
The coefficients of the fixed part of the official salary in this case will be increased in the same way as for teachers – by 1-15 percent.
How is the education system changing?
Ramūnas Skaudžius, Deputy Minister of Education, Science and Sports, specialist in the field of general education, spoke of three main ways a teacher “come” to school.
“These are pedagogical studies, parallel studies and additional professional studies for those who have already obtained a bachelor’s degree in a field and want to become a teacher.
The studios themselves are changing, they are modernizing. Universities are modernizing the educational base and creating the conditions to go abroad. More attention is being paid to collaboration with schools.
There are also many changes at the school level. For the third year in a row, a project is underway in which a young teacher who comes to school receives a mentor who helps him / her become stronger as a teacher. Also, a new teacher who has just arrived at the school has more hours to prepare to teach, ”said R. Skaudžius.
The vice minister also assured that schools are experiencing changes, improvements and changes.
“The methods are changing. Little by little, we need to change the role of the active person in the classroom, “take it out” of the teacher and pass the projects on to the students, so that they become more involved in group work. More and more technologies are emerging in schools, creating and filling digital content.
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