The teacher shortage is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. It can be defined as an insufficient number of teachers to meet the needs of an educational system (Lindqvist & Gidlund, 2025). The concept of “insufficient number of teachers” refers both to unfilled teaching vacancies at the start of the school year and to the use of teachers with provisional or incomplete qualifications (Nguyen et al., 2024). Research has shown that teacher shortages are not only related to difficulties in recruitment, but also to challenges in retaining teachers over time (See et al., 2020). This phenomenon is common across most OECD countries and has recently been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, along with other factors (European Commission, 2025). It therefore represents a significant challenge for educational systems. On the one hand, this phenomenon may worsen in the coming years. Recent reports estimate that the world will need 44 million teachers by 2030 to ensure universal primary education as envisaged by the 2030 Agenda (UNESCO, 2024). The key issue concerns the capacity of educational systems to ensure, in the medium term, a sufficient supply of qualified teachers. On the other hand, teacher shortage has consequences for teaching practices, students’ learning, and the overall quality of education (Lindqvist & Gidlund, 2025).

The existing literature has explored the causes underlying this problem. First, the ageing of the teaching workforce is linked to insufficient generational turnover (European Commission, 2025). Second, over time, the teaching profession has lost attractiveness, as schools are becoming increasingly stressful, demanding, and complex environments (Magni, 2025). In addition, low salaries, high workloads, and limited career prospects negatively affect the attractiveness of the profession (OECD, 2025). Moreover, many countries have rigid barriers to entering the teaching profession. Recruitment, promotion, distribution, and dismissal policies affect not only the quality of teaching but also the ability of an education system to prevent or manage shortages, since entry and retention conditions influence who applies, who is selected, and who stays (World Bank, 2013). Finally, teacher shortage is connected to teacher attrition, defined as the early leaving of the teaching profession. It is estimated that more than 30% of teachers who leave the profession do so within the first five years of service (Johnson, 2025).

Even though teacher shortage is considered a widespread phenomenon, recent methodological studies show that a single indicator cannot capture it exhaustively, as European countries use different definitions, methodologies, and data sources, making international comparison difficult (Di Pietro, 2023). This critical issue has contributed to a predominantly national or sectoral production of evidence, with limited explicit comparison between education systems. To address this gap, this contribution proposes a comparative analysis between selected European countries, based on OECD indicators, to highlight convergences and divergences in manifestations of shortage.

IIn light of the above, this contribution aims to provide an explicit comparison between selected European educational systems regarding the teacher shortage phenomenon. The indicators used for the comparison were drawn from the OECD report Education at a Glance (2025) and selected because they are identified by the OECD itself as key measures for monitoring teacher shortage (OECD, 2025). The indicators include the age profile of the teaching workforce, the proportion of non-fully qualified teachers, unfilled teaching vacancies at the start of the school year, and teacher attrition rates. In summary, this study represents a secondary analysis of indicators extracted from an existing report. The countries selected for comparison are Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Poland, and the United Kingdom (England), in order to cover different European areas. Italy was included to provide a national reference point for the comparative analysis. Building on evidence from Education at a Glance, this study focuses on Spain, France, Germany, Poland, and Sweden, as these countries show indicators or projections suggesting increasing pressure on teacher recruitment. However, separate data for pre-primary and primary levels regarding unfilled teaching vacancies and teacher attrition rates were unavailable.

Available data highlighted in the literature reveal the difficulties of harmonising the monitoring of teacher shortages. Despite these limitations, some patterns clearly emerge. Regarding age profiles, the data examine the shares of pre-primary and primary teachers younger than 30 and aged 50 or over. Italy presents the most critical picture: 54% of pre-primary teachers and 57% of primary teachers are aged 50 or over. Similar values are observed in Sweden (37% of primary teachers and 38% of pre-primary teachers aged 50 or over) and Poland (44% of primary teachers aged 50 or over). Regarding non-fully qualified teachers, data show that Sweden presents a distinctive situation, with 16.3% of primary teachers and 11.8% of pre-primary teachers not fully qualified. Sweden stands out compared to France, Poland, and England, which show lower percentages of non-fully qualified teachers. No data are available for Italy, Spain, and Germany. A similar pattern emerges for the indicator “unfilled vacancies.” Sweden shows the highest percentage (5.0%), while France, Poland, and England display lower percentages. No data are available for Italy, Spain, and Germany. Finally, regarding teacher attrition, England stands out (9.5%), followed by Sweden (5.9%) and Poland (4.4%), while France shows lower values. In England, the data indicate that teacher shortage is strongly connected to the retention problem, rather than age profile or qualification. In conclusion, the comparative analysis highlights that teacher shortage does not manifest uniformly across the selected countries. These differences confirm the value of an explicit comparison: analyses limited to single countries or indicators would not capture the different manifestations of the phenomenon. At the same time, missing data reinforce findings in the literature: European monitoring of teacher shortage still presents limitations that hinder a fully comparative understanding.

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