On Monday, the president attended the start of school year celebration at Trakai Vytautas Magnus Gymnasium.
„We are committed to a number of education reforms, and sometimes we see that the carriage of those reforms moves faster than the preparations for those reforms,“ he told reporters right after the event.
One of the examples is inclusive education reform, he said, noting that it is now limping despite an early start.
„We see that even today schools are still lacking not only the financial resources, but also teaching assistants to make the process smooth,“ Nausėda said.
Speaking of teacher shortages, he said the main problem is that young people, teachers by profession, tend to choose another career path.
„This is already a question of the prestige of our teachers – whether teachers see their profession as prestigious, when they see the salaries, when they see the additional working conditions, when they see the bureaucratic burdens that teachers face,“ the president commented, adding that a teacher’s pay is only one of the factors.
Around half a million pupils started the new academic year on 1 September this year, including 361.8 thousand at schools, a few thousands more than in 2023.
The number of Year 1 pupils stands at around 30,300 this year.