Cross-National Variation in Teacher Shortages During the Pandemic: Comparing PISA 2018 and PISA 2022 Data

• In Event: Poster Group 8
  In Poster Session: Cross-National Variation in Teacher Shortages During the Pandemic: Comparing PISA 2018 and PISA 2022 Data

Proposal

According to OECD (2023), many countries have witnessed an unprecedented rise in labor shortages during the coronavirus pandemic. In an international survey of more than 40,000 employers across all industry sectors, 54% of employers reported experiencing talent shortages in 2019, increasing to 69% in 2021 and 75% in 2022.
In the education sector, recruiting and retaining highly qualified teachers is critical. For countries where many schools already struggled with teacher shortage before 2020, the pandemic has further aggravated the issue of filling teacher vacancies.
In the United States, the School Pulse Panel reveals that 62% of public schools reported that they were concerned about filling vacant staff positions in June 2022, and that public schools expected to need to fill an average of three teaching vacancies per school for the 2022-23 school year. Regarding teaching vacancies in a specific field, the National Teacher and Principal Survey reported that during the 2020–21 school year, 40% of public schools found it very difficult or were not able to fill the vacancies for special education, as did 32% of public schools for vacancies in both English as a second language or bilingual education and mathematics.
This study aims to examine variations in teacher shortages across international education systems using data from PISA 2018 and PISA 2022 (released in December 2023) questionnaire items about school and student experiences since the onset of the pandemic. It focuses particularly on a school questionnaire item asking school administrators if their school’s capacity to provide instruction was hindered by a lack of teaching staff. Research questions are as follows:
• How does the percentage of 15-year-olds whose school’s capacity to provide instruction was hindered by a lack of teaching staff vary internationally, both before and after the pandemic?

• How does the mathematics, science and reading achievement of 15-year-olds across international education systems vary based on whether their school lacks teaching staff, both before and after the pandemic?

Our preliminary results from PISA 2018 show that the percentages of 15-year-olds attending schools that experienced a staff shortage “a lot” or “to some extent” ranged from 2% (Serbia) to 75% (Luxembourg). Also, these percentages varied by school location. For instance, the percentage of students attending schools with a lack of teaching staff in Australia was 60% in a village compared with 10% in a large city. Meanwhile in Belgium, the percentages of students attending schools with a lack of teaching staff were high in both villages (100%) and large cities (67%).
The results in some education systems also suggest that students in schools with staffing shortages are more likely to score lower in mathematics compared to those in school without staffing shortages (e.g., 458 vs. 489 in the United States, 489 vs. 502 in Norway).
Results from PISA 2022 will provide valuable insights to facilitate a comprehensive understanding of the pandemic’s impact on teaching shortages and present opportunities for learning from this unprecedented crisis to inform future strategies to increasing the teacher workforce.

Authors

• Amy Rathbun, American Institutes for Research

• Sakiko Ikoma, American Institutes for Research

• Yuan Zhang