Crowning a year-long effort, LLLP just published its annual position paper, titled "21st-century challenges for the educator profession: a call for system change".
This paper focuses on educators, who too often are considered
a ‘profession of last resort'. Based on our Lifelong Learning Glossary, we understand educators as all those who professionally guide and support learners in their learning process: teachers and instructors in formal vocational education and training, as well as trainers, coaches, and other professionals in non-formal settings and coaches supporting learning in the workplace.
The outpour of support for educators during COVID-19 came late since they
were not prepared and supported to deal with the pandemic. Moreover, the lessons
learned during those unprecedented times were forgotten, as reforms for re-valuing the profession were not provided in the aftermath of the pandemic. The shortages of educators occurring in Europe were disregarded almost completely in the 2023 European Semester cycle, and timidly appeared in the 2024 cycle. The Education and Training Monitor did spotlight shortages already in 2019, but repeated this in 2023. Across this period, the vocational crisis continued to deepen with an inability to attract young educators and retain those experienced. The challenges identified in 2019 touched upon the demographic makeup of the educator profession, with over 30% of teachers nearing the retirement age, and with even higher numbers in the Baltic countries, Italy, Greece or Hungary. Subject-specific shortages were also highlighted as well as the gendered nature of the education profession with a majority of professionals in lower levels of learning being women while a majority of professionals in higher levels of learning or in leadership positions being men.
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