Dr Isabel Flores, coordinator of the study ‘Teacher Reserves under the Magnifying Glass: An Anticipation of Teachers Needed and Available’, published by EDULOG last October, was invited to present the main results of this research in a webinar.

The webinar, which took place on 5 November, was organised by ReLeCo Formação, Profissionalismo e Identidades Docentes (ProFId) and had 45 registered participants, mainly researchers and students in doctoral training, mostly from the CeiED/U.Lusófona community. The session was moderated by Leanete Thomas Dotta, a researcher at CeiED, with António Teodoro, director of CeiED, opening and André Freitas, a researcher at CeiED, introducing the guest.

From the analysis carried out, based on various official data sources, the results point to the urgent need for measures to help increase the number of teachers in schools. If no action is taken, the pool of available teachers will dry up by the end of the decade, considering the growing number of retirements and the low number of teachers in training.

The study can be read in full, in open access, available here.

The study's main conclusions reveal that:

1. The number of permanent labour contracts has grown over the last few years, revealing the existence of teachers in the reserve (available) who wish to enter the career:
   • Of these teachers in the reserve, the vast majority are aged between 40 and 50; the teachers available to teach pre-school, primary school and physical education are the only ones with balanced age structures;
   • Of these reserve teachers, the number is still sufficient for current needs, but their geographical distribution is asymmetrical, with the regions south of the Tagus leaving annual vacancies unfilled;

2. The 3rd CEB and Secondary recruitment groups with the weakest age pyramids are Economics, Geography, Computer Science, Maths, Biology and Geology, and Physics and Chemistry;
3. If no action is taken, temporary absences, which account for 20 to 25 per cent of the system, will not be replaceable by 2030;
4. None of the countries studied has been able to fully resolve the problem of teacher shortages, even after more than 30 years of adopting various public policies;
5. The policies that have had some success in increasing the number of available teachers are linked to large incentives to support initial training;