World Teacher’s Day: the number of teachers in the European Union is more than 5 million, and women make up 70% and prefer to work in primary and secondary schools.

7 percent of teachers are under 30 years old, while 39 percent are over 50 years old..16 students per teacher in the Netherlands and only 7 in Luxembourg

Brussels: Europe and the Arabs

On the occasion of World Teachers’ Day corresponding to the fifth of October, the European Statistics Office in Brussels “Eurostat” published figures related to the number of male and female teachers in the countries of the European Union and stated that in 2020, there were 5.2 million teachers working in primary, middle and secondary education in the European Union

The teaching workforce

In terms of age, in 2020, 388 000 teachers were younger than 30 years old in the three education levels (7% of the total teaching workforce) in the EU. Meanwhile, 2.0 million teachers were 50 years old or older (39% of the total teaching workforce).

Almost half of the male teachers over 50 were teaching in upper secondary education (47%). Less than a fifth of male teachers over 50 were teaching in primary education (17%). 

For female teachers over 50 the split was more equal: primary education 40%, lower secondary 32% and upper secondary 28%.

Women accounted for the majority of the teaching workforce. In 2020, 73% of teachers employed in primary, lower secondary and upper secondary education were women (3.8 million). 
 

The average number of pupils per teacher was 12.3 in 2020

In the EU in 2020, the average number of pupils per teacher at the primary, secondary and upper secondary levels - the ratio of pupils and students to teachers - was 12.3.
The highest ratios were reported in the Netherlands (16.5 pupils per teacher), France (14.9) and Romania (14.3). Meanwhile, the lowest ratio was recorded in Luxembourg (7.1), followed by Greece (8.5) and Malta (8.8).