Teacher Shortage

RUSSIAN TEACHER SHORTAGE

By Stephen Wilson

 

 

Russia still suffers from a significant shortage of school teachers, claims a recent study by the Center of Non-stop Education and Institute of Investment in Economic Research. But the lack of school teachers is more critical in the rural villages and towns which have experienced a huge trend in depopulation as local people move to the cities in search of better paid work and job opportunities. Young people are still not attracted to the profession of teaching. Even those students who train as teachers at pedagogical institutes don't bother to work in schools or stay at schools on a long term basis. Only about 10- 20% of graduates go on to teach in schools and even this is not for long. The pedagogical institutes are often the source of endless anecdotes such as 'Those institutes are the easiest places to enter' and 'are the last refuge of blockheads' or that 'the teachers pretend to teach and the students pretend to learn'.

 

The study found that low pay was hardly the only factor in dissuading young people from entering the teaching profession. Young people who have been teaching and leave complain of not being allowed to be creative, not enough time to focus attention on children because of endless paperwork and having to do reports, problems with fitting into a school collective with a distinct mindset, badly behaved children who are often spoiled or rude, and the excessive demands of parents who place unrealistic expectations on them. Tanya Klyachko, the director at the institute, states, "Now children as a rule are difficult to work with. Working with them is not easy. Therefore, many young teachers are happy to quickly quit".

 

One of the results of a shortage of teachers in some schools in the rural villages is that a teacher of history might end up teaching extra topics such as Social Knowledge and Geography. The teacher may be asked to teach a subject they are not properly qualified in and are not too familiar with the textbooks or exams. You can also have a situation where at one school an old German teacher herself is not only the head of the German department but the only teacher. Now if this old teacher happens to retire or dies then that is the end of the German Department.

 

It is worth pointing out that many middle-aged teachers who have worked for years at schools in Moscow dream of leaving their posts to become full-time tutors. The number of private tutors in Russia has shot up. Although of course there is now a lot of competition between tutors, the most professional and experienced can often make a lucrative living from such a trade. By being a tutor, an ex teacher works far less hours, obtains four or four times the amount of income they would make in a school and have the right to refuse badly behaved pupils in favor of good ones. With triple pay for less than half the time you would work in school and some free time, is it any wonder a school teacher would be tempted to take up tutoring on a full time basis? And enormous stress vanishes! Unfortunately such an expanding trend can only reinforce the transition to a two-tier education system where the more affluent who can pay for extra tuition have advantages over the poor.  Every year the number of free places at Russian universities is being cut! As much as 27.2% of the Russian state budget was invested in the army, police and Rosgvard in 2021. The amount of people employed in policing Russia comes to the staggering figure of one and a half million! Compared to China and India, in terms of the ratio of police to the number of population, Russia represents one of the most policed countries in the world. In contrast to teaching, policing seems to be one of the most attractive and alluring professions. If you wonder around the streets of Moscow you will without fail notice a police car regularly driving up the road you are on every five minutes.

 

It is interesting to hear that some angry pupils compare teachers to police officers when they try to maintain discipline in the classroom. Nevertheless, we have not found much evidence of ex-teachers taking up posts in the police force! Instead, they are more likely to be enticed by tutoring.