Linas Jegelevičius
Rasa, a 40-year-old Lithuanian and German teacher in Klaipėda, is ready for the new school year. She is convinced that, with everybody yearning to catch up, it is the topic of a new teacher strike in September that will be on the lips of of her many colleagues.
“Frankly, I am already fed up with it. In reality, nothing changed or very little changed over all the years. Most teachers would happily dump schools and do something else in their lives,
as working at school is extremely stressful, demanding and means being underpaid.
Many of the teachers I know are on psychiatric medications to fight depression, anxiety,” Rasa, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told BNN.
When five years ago, striking teachers resorted to extreme measures – occupied parts of the Education Ministry building and stayed there for entire two weeks, 24-hours-a-day, many thought the radical move will make change. However, to the disappointment of teachers, it did not –
a warning strike is slated for the 15th of September and, if the desired results are not achieved, teachers will also walk out on the 29th of September, the Lithuanian Education Workers Trade Union (LŠDP), has announced.
Teachers are demanding better working conditions, including clarifications on when and how the number of pupils in classrooms will be reduced, how the workload of teachers will be regulated. The salary issue is on top of the agenda, obviously.
“We are not trying to do any more damage to the education process, but we just want to warn the government, and if nothing is done, then we’ll stage a real strike that could last even a month,” Andrius Navickas, head of the trade union, has said.
On Tuesday, the 29th of August, Lithuania’s Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė called
the demands of the trade union “unrealistic”, emphasising that there is no possibility to implement the requirement to increase salaries this year.
The PM insists her liberal-conservative Government is implementing the agreement signed with the trade union despite some force majeure – economic downturns that have occurred in recent years, which, the PM says, have affected not only teachers.
Approached by BNN, Navickas, the chairman of the Lithuanian Education Workers Trade Union (LŠDP), says that he does not “grasps” why Šimonytė calls the demands of teachers planning a strike unrealistic.
According to him, the demands of teachers planning to strike are included in the national agreement on education, which I. Šimonytė has also signed.
“It sounds very frivolous in the lips of a serious person like her. I do not understand at all which requirements are impossible to implement. After all, the prime minister also participated in the signing of the national agreement on education policy, and then it was agreed on a salary increase of up to 130 percent,” Navickas said.
According to LŠDP leader, the government is trying to “escape from the promises” made at the beginning of the term.
He calls on the Prime Minister to once again “familiarise” herself with the demands made by the trade union and to delve into them.
Another union, the Education and Science Trade Union, encompassing around 12 000 educators, has said it will decide in September whether to join the strike. It says low salaries are the main issue.
Meanwhile, the country’s Minister of Education, Gintautas Jakštas says he is “trying to avert a fresh strike” by inviting the union heads to meet with the ministry and present their proposals.
In recent years, Lithuania has been seen a sharp increase in unfilled staffing positions at schools, with some municipalities reporting shortages of several hundred teachers.
It is reported that the country’s secondary schools are short of 600 teachers for this school year.
For example, the Kėdainiai district municipality lacks 23 teachers of various subjects.
To tackle the shortage, the municipality in central Lithuania is implementing a motivation program for teachers and cooperates with Vytautas Magnus University, but it seems that this is not bringing any positive tangible results so far – the number of teachers in the district is decreasing. Besides, the poorer than expected results of this year’s state exams taken by Kėdainiai graduating pupils show that the quality of teaching is not increasing either, despite the municipality’s allotment of 100 thousand euros to attract teachers to the district.
The afore-mentioned Klaipėda teacher, Rasa, is sceptical about the efforts.
“Few young people see themselves as teachers. Too much stress at school. The profession has lost its prestige,” she says.
According to her, many teachers are “whimpering” because of an insufficient workload and, as the result, little salaries, thence the “constant jostling” for a bigger workload.
“So, it’s like a Catch-22 situation: you work less but you can barely make ends meet. Or, if you can, you work a lot but you get stressed and overworked. Last school year, I had 36 classes per week, which was just crazy. My salary was around 1200 euros “in hand”, but the majority of teachers receive less than one thousand,” she added.
She admitted she has asked her school’s principle to reduce her number of classes this school year, arguing that her “sanity”, not money matters most.
With September 1st just around the corner, updated textbooks for some schoolchildren have not even been printed yet, Rasa revealed.
“So it means a lot of nerve-racking ahead,” she added.
However, it goes without saying, much depends on local school principles in making sure the school is attractive to both pupils and teachers.
“In our school, we do not have any teacher shortage. In fact, we’ve hired a slew of new teachers recently. Of course, the lure of Palanga (Lithuania’s resort at the Baltic Sea – i.e.) is an important factor, but the efforts being made by the school management cannot be looked down upon, as we are in the position to create a nice, ambient, motivating working environment,” Leonas Šidlauskas, principle of Palanga Gymnasium, told BNN.
And although the general numbers of admissions to pedagogical specialties is on decline, director of Vilnius University Šiauliai Academy Renata Bilbokaitė told BNN that 200 freshmen will start the new school year.
“This is twice as many as last year and the year before.
Also, for the second time, about 214 pedagogues will retrain in our academy as pedagogues of other subjects. This is almost 11 percent more than last year. And we also admitted 70 students to the Master of Education, seven times more than last year – extremely encouraging numbers,” R. Bilbokaitė, professor and Doctor of Sciences, emphasised.