The Nordic Teachers´ Council has recently compiled information on the current teacher shortage, including the situation among preschool teachers. According to the publication, there is a notable shortage of qualified preschool teachers.
For instance in Sweden, there is an estimated risk of qualified preschool teacher shortages in two-thirds of the regions by 2035. In Finland, where there is otherwise a high level of trained professionals in the education sector, 16% of ECEC teachers are unqualified. Demand is highest in densely populated areas, such as Helsinki, where the shortage is up to 40% of the required pedagogical staff. In Iceland, the percentage of non-qualified ECEC teachers is as high as 72%.
In Norway, the overall situation with trained staff has been better in comparison with other countries, but there are ECEC teacher shortages, and the recent figures from Norway show that there has been a considerable decline in the number of applicants for ECEC teacher training in 2022 and 2023.
In Denmark, the rate of unsuccessful recruitments of pedagogues rose from 16% to 29% from 2019 to 2022. In the same period, the rate of unsuccessful recruitments also rose for pedagogical work assistants, from 7% in 2019 to 20% in 2022. It must be noted that pedagogues and pedagogical work assistants do not only work in the ECEC setting, therefore the rate of unsuccessful recruitments can only be used as an indicator of lack of staff in ECEC.
The Nordic Teacher´s Council report also addresses challenges in the Nordic Region when it comes to the level of salaries for preschool teachers and pedagogues, which lag behind salaries for other tertiary-educated employees in the public sector.
Another issue is the remarkable gender gap within ECEC staff (women make up around 90% to 99% in Nordic ECEC centres).