Brussels, 22/10/2002 (Agence Europe) - The information network on education in Europe (Eurydice) has published a survey on "The Teaching Profession in Europe: profile, trends and concerns", carried out with the backing of the European Commission and made up of four reports (the last two are expected this December and March 2003).
In its first report, Eurydice stresses that enhancing the status of teachers requires improving the level and extending the duration of their qualifications, noting that: - teachers remain very specialised in one subject or another, except for Denmark, Sweden, Iceland and Estonia, four countries where lower secondary level teachers are semi-specialised, and almost generalists. Teachers trained for general lower secondary level may, however, teach at other educational levels except in Belgium, the Netherlands and Austria. In its second report, Eurydice analyses how the 30 European countries covered by its network (the Fifteen, the three EFTA/EEA and twelve candidate countries for accession) react to the phenomenon of a shortage or surplus of teachers, providing, for the first time, comparable data. (The two reports are available on the site: http://www.http : //eurydice.org ).