RIGA – This morning I got a call from a friend who works as a teacher. She sounded upset over the news reports that the government plans to slash up to 8,000 teacher jobs in the fall. That’s one-sixth of all the teachers in the country. I tried to calm her down, but at the same time pointed out that it appears the government has no other choice.
“They want riots?” my friend asked. A legitimate question following the teacher protest.
The friend works several jobs, trying to support herself, her daughter and the unemployed son-in-law. The son-in-law used to work in construction. The little jobs he gets now don’t pay well or on time. She tries to make ends meet by offering private lessons, but that means working six days a week with little relief or rest.
Now the government has announced it will cut jobs, following an audit. Diena this morning said that there’s one teacher for every seven students in Latvia. It’s definitely too many in a country where the population has been shrinking. At the same time, little is known about what criteria the government will be using to slash teacher’s jobs. What’s a good teacher – is the question of the day.
What is the value of an average? The average temperature in LV is what? Does that in any way help me to predict the temp on a given day in January or in August?
Then Koķe un her minions try and justify using research from Providus, without ever noticing that Providus also mentions that in other countries, with higher/bigger ratios that they use technology extensively. Latvijā??
The entire report by IZM is extremely surface, lacking in any genuine analysis and without reference to any working models or paradigms. Sad that something so important seems to be in the hands of fools.
Just for the record, not that it makes a substantial difference, IZM did misrepresent this data. If you dig into Eurostat, you would see that if, instead of reporting the total number of teachers, they used full-time and full-time-equivalents (like most normal countries) the number is 1:11.8 . This makes LV among the most burdened with teachers, but not the worst. Also, proportionately, FI has more teachers (I love Finland).
I will respond to your detailed email in coming days.