Cuba's Teacher Shortage

Cuba began the new academic year with a shortage of teachers across all levels of education, despite government efforts to recruit more staff.

The education ministry acknowledged that there was a 4.8 per cent shortfall across the country’s 10,300 schools and 23 universities.

Six thousand teaching graduates were due to enter the system this year, along with 3,000 teachers who were brought out of retirement to help fill the gap. But it is still not enough. Overall numbers across all educational levels have fallen by 36,000 in the last five years.

Meanwhile, the number of pupils and students has also declined, a fall attributed to a high drop-out rate from schools.

The Communist Party’s official Granma newspaper reported that more than 1.9 million students enrolled in education this year, all the way from preschool to higher education. This represents a significant drop from the 2010-2011 school year, when over 2.4 million enrolled.

Cuba currently has some 1.7 million pupils from preschool to 12^th grade in school, and around 170,000 university students .

Ivan García Quintero, a blogger for the Miami-based Martí Noticias, says the school year in Cuba is characterised by “low salaries, teachers without a vocation, schools without access to new technologies, and parents spending money hiring private teachers for their children”.

José Ramón Machado Ventura, number two in the Communist Party, has announced that computer skills and English would be priorities in this academic year.

Cuba has been increasing its internet connectivity and installing more fibreoptic networks. According to the national statistics office, there were 1.1 million computers in the country at the end of last year. However, this meant that only 95 out of 1,000 residents had access to a computer.

Officials say schools will soon receive 3,900 computers, with 1,700 more allocated to higher education.

Ernesto García Díaz is a journalist for the digital news portal Cubanet News, and an intern with IWPR.