Economy 10 January 2024, 11:10am

Less than a quarter as many teachers begin career in 2024 as started training in 2018

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A total of 2,231 new graduate teachers started work this year, a quarter fewer than enrolled in teacher education in 2018, local daily Népszava reported on Wednesday.

A total of 2,231 new teachers started work in the 2023/2024 school year, the Education Office (OH) told Népszava based on the October 2023 public education statistics, after the paper asked about the exact number of new teachers starting their careers in public education institutions this school year.

The number of new entrants remains a fraction of those who started teacher training earlier.

Teacher training takes five years, so the majority of those who graduated in 2023 started their studies in 2018.

According to felvi.hu, 17,800 people applied for teacher training in the 2018 general admission procedure and a further 1,005 in the supplementary entrance procedure, with 9,289 admissions in the spring and 439 subsequently, meaning that a total of 9,728 people started teacher training in September 2018.

Only 22.9% of them started their career as newly graduated teachers in the 2023/2024 school year.

Although the number of trainee teachers this year is slightly higher than at the beginning of the previous school year 2022/2023 - when there were 1,884, according to an earlier OH report - this is also explained by the fact that the number of trainees in 2018 was also slightly higher than in 2017 (by 238).

There has not been a huge change in the proportion of those gaining admission to teacher training and entering the profession, with around 20% of those admitted in 2017 starting work as teachers in September 2022.

The shortage of teachers has not been helped by the fact that more than 2,200 new teachers have joined the system this academic year. According to the Central Statistical Office (KSH), the number of full-time teachers had fallen by 1,610 for the current academic year compared to the previous one.

This means that the number of full-time teachers has fallen to a historic low of below 146,000, and the number of children per teacher has increased slightly in the last few years, especially in secondary education.

The total number of teachers has fallen, despite a small but positive increase in the number of early career teachers. This also means that by the end of the 2022/2023 school year, more than 3,800 teachers have left the system for one reason or another, and the number of new entrants is not enough to fill the gap.

In the spring 2023 university admission, 18,673 students applied for teacher training, and a further 3,867 students who have missed the original application dates or were not accepted anywhere wrote entry tests. The total number of admissions in the two procedures was 12,796, which means that more people started their studies in this field last September than at any time in the last few years. However, how many of them will graduate and start working as teachers will only become clear years later.