How can the teacher shortage issue in Armenia be solved?

There is a serious shortage of specialists in the field of information technology today. It seems that today's young people are more interested in this field than the previous generation – back then, everyone wanted to become lawyers and international specialists, and an IT career seemed attractive to very few. 

Nowadays, of course, the situation has changed. However, for today's children to become good professionals tomorrow, they need to receive a quality education. The problem is that there are not enough teachers to give them this education.

YerevaNN research laboratory director Hrant Khachatrian believes that the problem of teacher shortage can be solved in two ways:

1. Work with specialists from other countries

In particular, scientists from other countries can, for example, supervise the scientific work of specialists in Armenia. The YerevaNN research laboratory has quite a lot of experience in such work, Hrant Khachatrian noted. 

Such an approach may be just irreplaceable, especially if scientific work is devoted to a topic on which there are no or very few specialists in Armenia. Exchange of experience with foreign specialists can also be very useful for both sides.

Such an approach to training and professional development is widely used today in medicine: specialists from other countries often come to give master classes and train their colleagues in new diagnostic techniques, surgery, etc. In the field of information technology, such an exchange of experience can also be very effective.

2. Increase the attractiveness of a teacher's career 

Khachatrian noted that if teaching and teaching careers are attractive, more children will want to choose to teach, and there will be many more teachers in the next generation.

But there is an enormous amount of work needed to accomplish this, and private organizations are not sufficient.

However, the non-profit Teach for Armenia project, which brings specialists in various fields to the provinces of the country and teaches in schools for at least two years, has had notable success in making a teaching career more attractive. 

Just a few years ago, few people believed that anyone would want to go to a distant village and teach children there. However, the project has made teaching in the villages attractive, and while in the first year only 14 people applied to Teach For Armenia, this year the project has already received more than 1800 applications from potential teachers.

"These people go to teach in villages where there are almost no normal teachers. During these two years, these professionals get inexpressibly positive emotions – including understanding how they can influence the lives of children in villages, how they can change it for the better, and open new doors and opportunities for them. Several of my friends participated in this program, and when they returned after two years of teaching, they really missed everything they had in their marzes. Now they are sad and don't understand what else they can do in life to experience the same emotions and have the same impact on their surroundings," said Hrant Khachatrian.

This project does make teaching an extremely attractive activity for many people, but it does not solve the fundamental problem in the country. In Armenia, according to the specialist, it is necessary to increase the attractiveness of full-time teachers, and this is complex and long-term work, much of which should be done at the state level.