Facing the Education Crisis: Finding Solutions to the Teaching Shortage

Teaching is a noble profession; there’s no doubt about it. It’s a calling, really. To educate others, with sacrifice for yourself along the way. People deliberately choose to be teachers, avoiding other, better-paying career pathways in order to inspire and enliven the lives of kids and teens. However, because of this and some other reasons, the country is facing a critical teaching shortage currently. This is a significant issue because schools need teachers to operate effectively. Without qualified teachers, we run the risk of a generation of under-educated, incapable workers, which could spell havoc for the economy and society in general. This thoughtful article will face the education crisis, and we’ll explore some solutions to the teaching shortage. Continue reading to learn more.

Increased Online Learning

If colleges offer EDD online programs and other online teaching qualifications, they’ll cast a wider net and potentially entice more students to enroll and become teachers. In-person learning can be a major barrier for some people to complete degrees, due to either geographical challenges, having to balance work and family commitments, disability, or other accessibility issues.

Online learning is flexible, accessible, and easy to balance around your life. By institutions offering more online learning opportunities, the barriers to entry to a qualification are lowered. Therefore, people who otherwise may not have been able to study to become a teacher could become one. More qualified teachers mean more teachers in schools, thereby presenting a neat solution to the teaching crisis.

Pay Teachers More

The main reason for the current teaching shortage is the fact that teachers are not paid enough compared to other qualified professionals. For instance, a first-year teacher in the US earns around $33-40 thousand a year, and this can rise to $60-70 thousand for an experienced teacher. Compare this to other white-collar professionals such as tech workers or business roles, and it is much less. People leave teaching jobs because the cost of living forces them to take roles where they can earn more money. This is the simplest solution to solving the teacher shortage. Well-paid people stay in jobs, especially if career progression opportunities mean they can earn more the longer they stay in a role. 

Teachers are definitely worth their weight in gold. They are single-handedly responsible for educating the next wave of doctors, lawyers, nurses, and every other profession in existence. A positive school experience in childhood can pave the way for a fruitful, productive, and fulfilling life. It makes sense to pay people for this vital job in our modern society.

Free Teaching Education

One innovative idea to solve the teacher shortage is for the government to subsidize the cost of teaching degrees. Student debt is a major problem in society and the fact that teachers aren’t paid much compounds this issue for this particular profession. Those who graduate as a teacher are stuck paying off their student loans while struggling to make ends meet on a teacher’s modest salary. By making a teaching degree free, someone can become qualified and keep more of their earnings, which then gets funneled into the economy and helps them achieve a better status in life. 

Subsidized Housing in Key Areas

Some geographical locations are more challenging to staff than others. For instance, populous city schools are often at an advantage over rural or remote schools. Even within cities, poorer areas struggle to retain skilled teaching staff. One solution to this is to offer subsidized housing to teachers to incentivize them to come and work at schools that need staff the most. With cheaper housing, a teacher’s pay packet will last longer, and they will retain more of their wages to afford other living expenses. For instance, the government could buy up cheap housing in areas, and convert it to accommodation for teachers. 

Removing Unnecessary Administration Tasks 

A major complaint of teachers, and a contributing factor to people leaving the profession in droves, is the amount of unnecessary administrative work they need to perform. As successive governments and school district boards have cut administrative staffing roles, the bulk of this work has fallen to already busy teachers. The more administrative work a teacher needs to perform, the less time they have for teaching, lesson planning, grading work, and other essential work that they signed on to perform. By re-creating designated administrative roles and re-directing this work to them, teachers will be able to dedicate more time to the work they want to do. This will result in better outcomes for students, increased morale, job satisfaction for teachers, and increased workforce retention rates. This is an easy, achievable solution to the current teaching shortage. 

Skilled Migrant Labour

Another solution to the current teaching shortage is to allow skilled migrants to enter the country to come and work as teachers. There are lots of qualified staff living in other countries who may relish the opportunity to come and live in the land of the free and leave war-torn, strife-filled countries behind. By creating migration opportunities, the teacher shortage could be solved. Many migrants could come to the country and earn much more than they could in their home countries. Suppose they can bring their families with them. In that case, they can offer their loved ones an improved quality of life and an opportunity to leave a country where they face discrimination or prejudice due to various factors.

Offer Professional Development

One way to retain and keep staff happy, no matter the industry, is to offer professional development opportunities. This is a critical, non-monetary method of acknowledging staff and allowing them to develop their careers. By offering teachers the opportunity to upskill, you can keep them happy in their roles and mitigate the risk of them leaving for a career pathway that offers this benefit. Whether it’s further education, certificates, specialized learning, or other vital PD, this could be a real way to solve the current teacher shortage.

Offer On-Site Childcare

Women are 50% of the population, but many are locked out of teaching career opportunities due to having to rear children. One way to encourage women to become teachers and enable them to participate in the workforce fully is by offering onsite childcare facilities at school. On-site childcare could mean that working mothers can step into teaching roles without having to worry about beating traffic to get to the childcare center and then to work on time. It also enables breastfeeding mothers to work, as onsite childcare means they can pop in to feed their infants and then return to the classroom.

A Shortage Summary

This resourceful article has faced the education crisis and has suggested some key, achievable strategies to solve the current teaching crisis. From paying teachers more, free education, subsidized housing, and more, these crucial suggestions pave the way to happy, engaged, and fulfilled teachers who will stay on the job.

(Devdiscourse's journalists were not involved in the production of this article. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of Devdiscourse and Devdiscourse does not claim any responsibility for the same.)