The year the OECD turned its gaze to the staffroom

There is an autumn ritual that every management team knows. At the end of September, the OECD publishes its Education at a Glance, the original title, several hundred pages of tables that almost no one reads in full and that feed headlines for a week: how much we spend, how many graduates we have, how far we are from the average. Then the heavy volume is archived until the following year. This year's deserves another fate, because the OECD has done something unusual: it has dedicated the monograph of the 2026 edition to "teacher shortages and the attractiveness of the teaching profession." The accountant of world education has looked up from the ledger and turned their eyes toward the staff room.

It is worth pausing to consider what that means. When an agency that measures entire systems decides to start counting teachers, it is because they are beginning to run short. The report speaks of unfilled vacancies, delayed substitutions, countries supporting their classrooms with teachers who do not hold full qualification requirements (on average, around 8% of primary and secondary teachers, with some countries above 20% and no comparable figure for Spain) and aging staffs. On average across the OECD, one in seven lower secondary teachers aged between 30 and 49 plans to leave the profession within the next five years. The word "shortage, " which we used to reserve for raw materials, appears applied to the craft of teaching in the sector's most cited report.

And then comes the Spanish data, and the narrative twists in the most interesting way. Because Spain, amid this exodus, turns out to be an anomaly: here only 5.2% of teachers in that age bracket plan to leave, compared to an average of 14.8%, according to TALIS 2024 data gathered in the Panorama itself. Seventy-two percent declare themselves satisfied with their working conditions, above the OECD average of 68%. And hold on, because here comes what no one would say out loud on a Monday morning: 54% are satisfied with their pay, compared to 39% internationally. The Spanish teacher, in comparative terms, ranks among those least wishing to leave and the least dissatisfied with their paycheck.

The temptation is to close the file here and congratulate ourselves. That would be reading only half the page. The other half has been written for years in the same family of surveys: these very teachers who stay do not feel seen. The union interpretation of the report insists that teachers do not feel sufficiently valued by society, an impression consistent with what TALIS has recorded for years: in 2018, only 14% of lower secondary teachers believed their profession was valued in society, compared with 26% on average across the OECD. The Panorama offers no comparable figure on that social recognition, although TALIS 2024 does record that 65% of Spanish lower secondary teachers feel valued by families. Spain retains its teachers, but does not grant them prestige. They stay for the craft, not for the mirror.

The unions, in fact, have read the same report and seen something else, and they should be heard. STEs-i highlights bureaucracy as a source of stress for more than half of teachers, a Spanish rate of temporary employment that the Panorama itself captures, with 69% of lower secondary teachers on permanent contracts compared with 81% across the OECD, and salaries whose evolution over the decade needs to be qualified by inflation. "The conditions are lacking to practice this vocation with dignity, " they summarize. These are not two different reports; they are two morals from the same table, and the discrepancy lies in a nuance that no statistic can resolve: whether staying is a sign of health or of resignation. The Education at a Glance does not say, and anyone who assures you otherwise is selling you their conclusion, not the OECD's.

There is also a figure buried in the demographic chapter that shifts the board more than any other. The OECD projects that between 2024 and 2033, the population aged 5 to 14 will fall by an average of 9%; in Spain, by 13%, although the population under five is projected to grow by 4%. The two opposing interpretations are already served: the accounting one (fewer students, fewer classrooms, fewer staff) and the pedagogical one: the historic opportunity to lower ratios and gain individual attention per student. It is a budgetary and political debate that will not be resolved in this space; we leave the data with its source for whoever must address it.

But demography conceals a third question, less comfortable and more ours: where will the teachers of 2035 come from. The encouraging Spanish data, the low intention to leave, speaks of the exit door. It says much less about the attractiveness of the entry door: the Spanish teaching workforce is relatively young (21% of teachers are 55 or older, compared with 23% across the OECD, and the share under 35 rose from 16% to 18% between 2015 and 2024), and the report has no comparable data on vacancies in Spain. A trade from which people do not flee but perhaps do not run toward either has a different problem from that suffered by countries with flight: it does not need to retain, it needs to seduce once more. And the question that titles the monograph (is the teaching profession attractive?) is answered in Spain with an awkward silence: for those on the inside, yes, in their stubborn way; seen from the outside, with a majority of teachers feeling undervalued, it is hard to imagine a brilliant eighteen-year-old student putting it at the top of their list.

And this is where the report, without intending to, stops speaking to the minister and starts speaking to the principal of a specific school. Salaries are negotiated far from your office. Ratios are set by someone else. But the attractiveness of the profession operates on a small scale that no yearbook measures and that you decide each school year: how your faculty looks from the desks. A teenager does not decide if teaching is desirable by reading the OECD; they decide by looking for years at the teachers in front of them, unconsciously gauging if those people live something worth inheriting. The best poster for the profession remains a teacher with their passion alight, and that, unlike the paycheck, is indeed nurtured at home: in what conversations that faculty has, what they read, how much of their training touches what is important and not just what is urgent. On that scale, Thenomba works with schools, because a faculty that cares for its own cultural background and sense of mission does not just retain teachers: it engenders them. Schools with history know this well, and that is why they are so pained by the local version of the problem that the OECD now notes on a grand scale: it is increasingly difficult to find teachers who share the mission. The most reliable seedbed was always the schoolyard itself: the former student who one day discovers that what they were given, they want to return from the lectern.

When the 2027 Education at a Glance returns next September with its portion of tables, we will know if the shortage is worsening or easing. Meanwhile, there is a statistic that no yearbook will record and that you can begin counting this week: how many of your students, looking at one of your teachers, have ever thought "I want to do that." If the OECD has decided to count teachers, you count those moments. From them, everything else follows.

Cover image generated with artificial intelligence.