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The proportion of licensed teachers has never been higher

The proportion of licensed teachers has never been higher since Statistics Iceland started its data collection in 1997. The proportion of licensed teachers was 80-87% in 1998-2008. In the autumn of 2010 it was 92.3% and was 95.5% in the autumn of 2011. In 2011 there were 213 teachers teaching without a teaching licence, which is a big drop since the autumn of 2002 when 931 were teaching in compulsory schools without being licensed.

The proportion of licensed teachers is highest in the Capital Region outside of Reykjavík, where 97.5% of teachers hold a teaching licence. Only in the Northwest (88.0%), East (87.8%) and in the Westfjords (84.3%) is the proportion of licenced teachers under 90%. The proportion of licensed teachers outside the Capital Region has increased rapidly in recent years, from being under 50% in the last decade of the last century in a few regions.

The number of teachers decreased for the third consecutive year
In the autumn of 2011 there were 7,337 staff members working 6,681 full-time equivalent jobs in compulsory schools in Iceland. Thereof 4,743 were teaching staff in 4,559 full-time equivalent jobs. The number of teaching staff, i.e. headmasters, assistant headmasters, heads of department and teachers decreased by 143 (2.9%) from the previous year. The number of teaching staff has decreased by 358 since its peak in 2008 (7.0%). The number of full-time equivalent teaching staff decreased by 112 (2.4%) from 2010 to 2011 and in the autumn of 2011 there were 457 fewer full-time equivalent teachers than in 2008 (9.1%). The number of other staff than teaching staff has decreased by 189 (6.8%) from the autumn of 2008 and their full-time equivalents have decreased by 194 (8.4%).

In the autumn of 2011 males were 19.9% of teaching staff. This is the first time that their share of the teaching staff is lower than 20 percent.
A total of 688 fewer members of the teaching staff worked more than one full-time job in 2011 than in 2008. It seems that there is less overtime work among members of the teaching staff than in the autumn of 2008.

Teacher turnover has increased from the previous year
In October 2011, 14.9% of the teaching staff who were employed in October 2010 had left or taken leave from their job, a total of 729 teachers. This turnover rate is higher than in the previous year when it was 13.2%. Teacher turnover is greater among part-time teachers than among full-time teachers. The turnover is also considerably higher among teachers without a teaching licence (39.0%) than among licensed teachers, (12.9%).

The average age of teachers continues to increase
The number of younger teachers decreased more from the previous year than the number of older teachers. There were 137 fewer teachers under the age of 45 than in the previous year, while the number of teachers 60-64 years old increased by 21. In 1998 59.1% of teachers were younger than 45 years old. In the autumn of 2011 their share was down to 47.5%, indicating a corresponding increase in the share of older teachers. The average age of teachers was 45.3 years in the autumn of 2011.

Pre-primary schools, compulsory schools and music schools operating as one institution
Since laws on pre-primary schools and compulsory schools were passed in 2008 it has become more common to operate pre-primary schools, compulsory schools and even music schools together under the management of one headmaster. In the autumn of 2011 this was the case for almost 30 institutions. This mode of operation is more common in small communities in the countryside but there are examples found in larger communities as well.

Statistics