Difficult country for teachers/ In the North there is no one to teach mathematics

2024-05-24 07:34:00, Ekonomi CNA

Difficult country for teachers/ In the North there is no one to teach

Illustrative photo

Human resources have become a big problem for sustainable development, but now the public sector is also suffering, which in the past had strong competition for jobs.

This week's data from the Teacher Portal for Albania show that there are 222 unfilled positions for math teachers and language and literature teachers across the country. There is a shortage in almost all municipalities of the country, but in the northern ones the situation is emergency.

The biggest problem is in the municipalities of Kukës and Dibra, where there are also the biggest shortages, which are not being filled, especially math teachers.

In Kukës there are currently 29 vacant positions for mathematics teachers and in Dibër 23 such. The third comes the municipality of Tirana, where 11 mathematics teachers are missing in pre-university education. These places have been vacant since at least the beginning of March, when Monitor did the last verification.

In the profile of the Albanian language and literature, 64 teachers are missing, with the biggest shortages being the municipality of Durrës with 9 vacancies, Kukësi with 7 and Puka with 6.

Language and mathematics are the basic subjects in pre-university education, but as you can see, the biggest shortages are for mathematics teachers. The North has the biggest regional shortages. The gymnasiums of the administrative units in Kukës and Dibër carry out teaching activities in a considerable part without qualified mathematics teachers.

External emigration and internal movements have created these shortages. Young people from the regions who finish the school for teachers do not prefer to return to their homeland. On the other hand, the teaching profession is not well paid to attract employees from regions that have a surplus of mathematics teachers.

But the situation for mathematics teachers seems to be problematic in the whole country, since there are already 11 vacancies in the Municipality of Tirana, which have not been filled for months.

The mathematics teachers who graduated in the 1990s were of high quality, since during the communist era high school students with the highest achievements studied in the natural sciences, while after the 2000s the opposite has happened. High school students with poor averages continued their studies for the remaining empty places in the mathematics department.

Also, this branch is in danger of being closed completely since last year the number of students attending studies was low. In the academic year 2023-2024, branches related to teaching, such as Physics, History, Language-literature, archeology, Biology, Philosophy had over 70-80 percent of free quotas in the first round, while the branch of mathematics in the faculty of sciences is in danger of closing due to the lack of students.

Under these conditions, a high school student with an average of 5 who studies mathematics does not guarantee quality in teaching in the future. Currently, the mathematics subject in most schools is taught by the generation that graduated before the 1990s. With the retirement of this generation, the mathematics subject risks being left without a teacher or, at best, will be taught by the graduates who had the weakest results . /Monitor