The teachers� merry-go-round: job insecurity and staff turnover over the last 2 years

The paper illustrates the recent trends in the use of contract staff and in staff turnover in the Italian education system, traditionally plagued by high levels of job insecurity and turnover. The system has been affected by the extraordinary scheme for hiring permanent teachers in 2015 and a mobility and reallocation plan the following year. The number of people on the national list of untenured teachers (frozen about 10 years ago) shrank from 124,000 to 47,000 (to which we should, however, add another 34,000 teachers added to a reserve list following a judgment by the State Council). The use of contract staff remained largely unchanged: the number of annual job contracts rose from 118,000 to 126,000, and fell from 14.6 to 14.4% as a share of total staff, the numbers of which have grown in the meantime. The share of those on the local lists of supply teachers (yet not required to follow a postgraduate internship program) increased among teachers with a yearly contract, who are on average younger than before. Staff mobility and turnover rose sharply, regardless of problems with implementation which led to a considerable rise in staff reassignment in the last school year.