What do education graduates do? Professional mobility of teachers and other educational workers

In this article we focus on the analysis of some more commonly mentioned reasons for the shortage of teachers in the Czech education system. In particular, we look at the extent to which graduates of teaching and education studies enter occu­pation matching their field of study and the extent to which teachers and educational workers remain in the field throughout their careers. To analyse this issue, we use data from various international (EU LFS, EU SILC, OECD TALIS) and national data­bases (teachers’ survey 2009 and 2021, higher education students’ survey 2009 and 2022, Absolvent 2018 and VŠPS ČSÚ).

The results of our analyses show that only a quarter of economically active graduates of teacher training of HEIs work outside their field, which is not only lower than on average do graduates of other fields, but also lower than their counterparts in most European countries. In the Czech Republic, the departure of young education graduates from matching occupations is rather due to a maternity and parental leave than because of the departure to other occupations. The main reasons why young people do not enter the teaching profession are considered by the teachers themselves to be the possibility of finding a better job in other occupations and persistently the low salaries. In contrast, current students of teacher education rather tend to see the high demands, stress and low esteem of the teaching profession. We also show that, even in terms of mobility throughout their working lives, HE graduates with an education degree are no more likely to leave their field to work in a nonmatching occupation than their colleagues abroad or graduates from other fields.