STA, 4 October 2021 - More women than men work in education-related professions in Slovenia and the situation is getting more imbalanced still. Ahead of World Teachers' Day, Statistics Office data show that the higher the level of education, the less disproportionate the share.
The number of women in education is increasing - in the 2020-2021 academic year the figure rose by 7% compared to four years ago.
The share of women working in kindergartens is 97%, in primary school 88% and in secondary school 66%.
In the latest school year, there were almost 19,500 primary school teachers, up by 1% year-on-year, as the number of pupils also increased to some 193,160. The ratio of teaching staff per pupils was 1:10.
Nearly 6,340 teachers taught in secondary schools in the 2020-2021 academic year, also slightly up compared to the previous year as the total of students also rose. The ratio of teaching staff per students was 1:10.
Meanwhile, tertiary education is slightly more of a domain of men as the share of male experts working at tertiary education institution is 53%.
In total, 5,669 experts worked there in the previous academic year, down by almost 2% year-on-year. Most of them had PhDs - 82% among the men and 72% among the women.
The situation in education-related professions is likely to remain gender-imbalanced as more female students than the male were enrolled in teacher education programmes in the past academic year (87%).
Overall, most teachers in the 2020-2021 school year belonged to the 30-49 age group (57%).
Public spending on education in 2019 totalled EUR 2.38 million or 4.9% of GDP, up on 2018. The largest share of these funds was allocated for primary education.
