Teacher Projections 2019-2040

We project a surplus of teachers towards 2040. It is only for primary and lower-secondary school teachers that we project a deficit until 2025.

The calculations suggest that we can maintain today’s teacher density and even increase it, set up against the stipulated number of future children/youth/adults in child care centers, compulsory education, and high school.

The results must be interpreted with caution and seen in the light of the model assumptions. The model does not aim to project the right supply and demand in 2040 but indicates supply and demand given statistics from the starting year of the projection, 2019, including first-year students and completion rates for the various teacher educations, which are kept constant.

The population projection is the only dynamic element in the model, except the stock of teachers in the base year ages during the projection period and leaves the supply-side due to age. Simultaneously, new teacher candidates (based on student numbers and completion rate) enter the stock annually. The age-specific population projections, which constitute the growth in demand for teachers, are from 2020. There is uncertainty associated with these population projections.

LÆRERMOD considers that teachers work outside the sector and work in different parts of the teaching sector. We assume varying demands (demographic developments) for age groups and users at different education levels.

Teachers in LÆRERMOD are measured in person-year and defined based on education, not occupation. It means that we only study qualified teachers. We now determine the stock of teachers without including special education teachers and those with other pedagogical educations. For the first time, we also examine regional variation on the demand-side.