Eight percent. That is the share of primary and secondary teachers in the Union aged under thirty, according to Eurostat figures the Commission itself publishes. Around forty percent are fifty or older, and only a third of the profession sits below forty. Those numbers describe a workforce that is retiring faster than it replaces itself, and they explain why an EU Teachers and Trainers Agenda now sits on the Commission work programme for this year.
The agenda promises to address teaching shortages, working conditions and career prospects. It arrives into a policy landscape that already contains a Basic Skills Action Plan and a STEM Education Strategic Plan adopted in March 2025, which set out to lift science and mathematics attainment and to draw more girls and women into technical careers. Neither of those documents answers the question the shortage data poses, because both assume the teachers exist.
The EU STEM Coalition made that point in a position paper filed in July, arguing that the scarcity of science and mathematics teachers is now the binding constraint on Europe’s green and digital ambitions. A national curriculum can require computing lessons. A funding line can equip a laboratory. Neither produces a physics teacher willing to work for a public sector salary when industry pays considerably more for the same degree.
Almost every member state has adopted policies against shortages, according to Eurydice indicators, mostly through better workforce planning, recruitment drives and expanded initial teacher education. The persistence of the gap suggests those measures address supply into training rather than retention after it. Graduates enter classrooms and leave them, and Europe has thin comparable data on how many depart in the first five years or why.
Competence sits with capitals, which limits what any Brussels agenda can do. Salaries, contracts, pension rules and qualification requirements belong to national ministries, and education ministers guard that boundary carefully. The Commission can fund mobility, commission comparative research, convene peer learning and set benchmarks. It cannot raise a teacher’s pay.
What it can do is make the trade-offs visible. Comparable data on attrition, on the age profile of subject specialists and on the true cost of a vacancy would let ministers see whether the cheaper route is paying more now or recruiting continuously against a shrinking pool. That kind of evidence has shifted national debates before, on early school leaving and on vocational training.
A consultation ahead of a wider education package is running this autumn, and the shape of the Teachers and Trainers Agenda will depend heavily on what ministries are willing to concede in it. The risk is a document that lists ambitions the Union cannot fund and cannot compel.
The demographic arithmetic does not wait for consultations. A cohort that is forty percent over fifty will keep leaving, and the eight percent under thirty will not cover the gap.
