The number of applicants for teacher training is woefully low

AFTENBLADET THINKS: The number of applicants for teacher training is down for the fifth year in a row. It’s bad news for all of us.

Nothing is more important to what children learn at school than the teacher. She who manages to make you understand fractions, he who sees that behind all your typos there is a thinking and creative mind, she who understands that most of all you need to be able to use your body. The one who gave you feedback you grew on, because you realized he knew exactly you. Those who made a difference. And of course you remember it, if teachers put marks on you in a negative way.

For those of us who want to work with people, and preferably with children, the teaching profession should be high on the wish list. That’s not how it is. Applications for the education are down for the fifth year in a row. For primary and secondary school education, the decline is 11 and 12 per cent. Since 2018, the search has almost halved. Last year, one in three study places was empty.

The vast majority of those seeking higher education naturally come from years of schooling. They know what school is. Too few of them want to return and work in it.

It is serious for us. We lack more than 5,000 qualified teachers. In February, the Minister of Education, Kari Nessa Nordtun, presented a strategy for how they will solve it until 2030. One of the most important things there is to make it possible for those who work at school but do not have an education to be able to acquire that next to work. Then they also want to strengthen the team around the student, so that the teacher can be a teacher, and give new graduates a good start in working life, with good enough and close enough guidance from experienced teachers.

One of the last things Minister of Health Ingvild Kjerkol decided before she was fired was that there should be an end to pretending that running a hospital is cheaper than it actually is. The question is whether the same should not apply to schools and kindergartens. Does enough money follow the requirements for what they are going to do?

We believe too there is reason to look at teacher training. Why do you actually need a master’s degree to become a teacher? This makes the education expensive, long and theoretical for the students. What about bringing up the old general teacher? Who needed three years of higher education to be able to teach primary school? With a guarantee of getting a mentor in the first year of work?

Because in all the figures on the application to higher education, there is an increase among those who want to become teachers in vocational subjects and in practical and aesthetic subjects. Perhaps those who want to become teachers also want more possible routes into professional life.

It should also be looked at. Because we cannot in any way afford to run out of good teachers.