Teacher absences as a result of illness is greatly aggravating the shortage of teachers this school year, La Libre Belgique reports, citing statistics from the administration of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation (FWB).
The teacher absence rate exceeded 11% last December, up from 9.7% in the same period the year before. Absences peaked at nearly 10% in April, 8% up on April 2022.
Between September 2018 and September 2022, the sickness leave rate for kindergarten and primary school teachers increased from 4.6% to 6.4%. Absence rates hovered around 8-9% for all the other months of the last school year.
The statistics reveal three significant spikes in sick leave last academic year, notably in December 2022, where absence rates reached 11%, and around 10% in both February and April 2023. These levels are around 2 percentage points higher than the previous year.
The current levels of absenteeism even exceed those recorded during the Covid-19 pandemic. For example, the peak sick leave rate was 5.2% in September 2020 and 6.6% in December 2020.
Teacher illness rates are similar for French-speaking secondary education. From September 2018 to September 2022, the proportion of days not worked due to illness increased from 4.4% to 6%.
The proportion of absent days rose in almost every month last year. Never was absenteeism over 8% in the 2018-2019 school year, but last academic year it was regularly above this level.
This trend has a significant impact on the sector, which is already extremely short-staffed, especially for Dutch-speaking teachers for immersion classes. High sickness absence rates are also hitting other sectors, drastically increasing the need to find more qualified professionals.
