Since the economic crisis began, teaching posts have decreased: the aging of the teaching staff due to cuts -due to the suppression of voluntary and incentivized retirement at age 60-, the limits on the retirement replacement rate , as well as the destruction of employment, have caused us to have teachers over 50 years old, on average.
On Wednesday, during the presentation in Madrid of the report How much do teachers work? Myths and truths, the CCOO Teaching Federation remarked that the OECD establishes as the optimal composition of the staff that which gives 0.5 as a result of dividing the number of teachers under 30 years of age by that of those over 50 years of age. In other words, there should be one teacher under 30 for every two over 50. In the case of Spain, this ratio is 0.15, that is, one in seven. 37% of Spanish teachers are over 50 years old, and 70,000 teachers will retire in the next five years.
According to data from the Ministry of Education included in the report, in the 2016-2017 academic year there were 182,161 teachers over the age of 50 in Spain in general public education centers.
The situation is very similar in public and private centers, although the teachers in the latter are a little younger.
The School Council also establishes a differentiation by gender and highlights the fact that 72% of Spanish teachers are women. This implies that there is no parity in teaching. The feminization of the profession in formative stages is palpable. However, the trend is reversed in higher education: men are only the majority among university professors. This tonic is not exclusive to Spain; in other countries such as Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia or Romania, women in infant and primary education represent more than 90%, according to Eurostat data. This is so because in these countries, for hundreds of years, teaching has been associated with the female gender, since women are responsible for childcare and, consequently, an extension of childrearing. The school is the reflection or the mirror where the roles between both sexes are projected.
The CCOO report also warns of the unequal situation of the working day when compared to the European average. In Primary, Spanish teachers teach 118 more teaching hours per year, which represents an additional 15.48%. Teaching hours in Secondary, FP and Special Regime Education also exceed the ratios, 6.7% in the case of Secondary and 9.73% in Baccalaureate, Intermediate Training Cycles, Artistic Education and Official Language Schools .
revert cuts
The socialist government, but in the eyes of the unions it is insufficient. The new educational law approves an improvement in working conditions and suppresses the latest measures of the Royal Decree approved by the Executive of Mariano Rajoy in 2012 to apply cuts in education.
However, even if the cuts have been reversed, teachers are still not happy as there is still a long way to go to catch up with their counterparts in Europe. The CCOO claims that more than 48,800 teachers are necessary (13,100 in Infant and Primary and 35,700 in Compulsory Secondary) so that the school day of Spanish teachers is equal to the EU22 average.
The Employment in Education report, by Infoempleo and Unir, highlights that, by CCAA, those with the highest growth in the number of teachers are: La Rioja (27%), Andalucía (23.2%), Melilla (18.8%), %), the Balearic Islands (18.4%) and Murcia (16.8%). With regard to teachers in private centers, the increase in teachers in Andalusia (45.5%), Murcia (44.8%), La Rioja (39.3%) and Melilla (33.8%) stands out.
Along the same lines, the Executive is now preparing a modification of Royal Decree 276/2007 which regulates admission, access and acquisition of specialties in teaching bodies, to prevent trainee teachers from being harmed by their situation. maternity leave when applying for a job contest.
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