Teacher supply and the market for teachers

The share of non-certified teachers in compulsory public schools has grown considerably during the last decade, from 7.2 percent in 1995/96 to 17.2 percent in 2003/04. Moreover, comparisons between schools and municipalities indicate large and increasing differences in the share of non-certified teachers over time. In this paper we study whether these patterns may be explained by restrictions in the supply of certified teachers. We do this by using a temporary targeted governmental grant, aimed at increasing the personnel density in schools, as an exogenous teacher demand shock. Our results show that the introduction of the grant decreased the share of non-certified teachers more in areas characterized by relatively high unemployment rates among certified teachers, i.e., where teacher supply restrictions were relatively low. These findings hence suggest that teacher supply restrictions do indeed matter for the composition of teaching staff.

Introduction: The debate on school and educational quality is usually centered on questions about teachers’ different characteristics such as education, experience and certi-fication. Teacher quality is considered to be one of the most important factors affecting student achievement, and is a central notion in the shaping of school and education policies. Despite the consensus that teachers are important, the opinion on what teacher quality exactly means and which teacher character-istics that are the most important is not unanimous among debaters, politicians and researchers. The existing literature does not present a consistent picture regarding these questions and the need for more evidence is large.

Author: Christian Andersson,Nina Waldenström

Source: IFAU – Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation

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