Tackling the teacher shortage

The reading this week is from the National Centre for Education and Economy in the USA and discusses how one high-performing country, Estonia, is addressing its teacher shortage.

1. Many schools, including high-performing systems, are struggling with teacher shortages and retention. (I spoke to a school leader in Victoria last week who was 17 teaching staff short).
2. Estonia has a great education system, ranking 37th on the disciplinary climate index (Aus: 82nd) and 7th in PISA results* (Aus: 11th) and has for years been trying to ensure teaching is competitive with other professions (particularly Estonia’s strong technology sector).
3. Estonia studied the salaries of its teachers and concluded that it needed to provide stronger financial incentives to teach. Teacher salaries have increased about 40% from 2016 to 2020 and the Education Minister in 2022 committed to raising salaries to 120% of the average wage in Estonia by 2023.
4. Estonia is also focused on diversifying the teacher pool by recruiting second-career candidates and creating part-time positions for specialists from other fields.
5. Estonia is engaged in rethinking the nature of the job of teaching itself. The top performer is promoting new ways of organising schools that support more flexible schedules for teachers, more relevant professional learning, and stronger forms of teacher leadership.

Read the full article.

*I acknowledge the pros and cons of using PISA results as a measuring stick but elaborating on this is beyond the scope of this email. An analysis of PISA formed the basis of my Masters in International Education Policy and Doctorate in Standardised Testing in Education.

What you can do

• Actively discuss and promote strategies to ease teacher workload (simplifying processes, aligning timetables, sharing curriculum resources).
• Devote time to learning more about wellbeing and culture. This book on workplace excellence is a good start.
• Talk to those in your organisation who are thriving and scale up their success.

Coaching feedback

If you are interested in how coaching can support school culture, here’s some feedback from last week’s Coaching in Action Days:

• The most practical engaging PD I’ve been on.
• You got to spend time meeting other professionals and it was not intimidating to share your thoughts.
• Wonderfully interactive and memorable as included some hot seat moments.
• Great venue, presenter and topics.
• It was fabulous because it was practical!

Visiting classes and reflecting on coaching skills. Practising the coaching was also super valuable.