Slovakia to fund teacher retraining and boost salaries to address shortages

Slovak education minister Tomáš Drucker said the country faces acute shortages of teachers in subjects such as mathematics, informatics and physics, worsened by an aging teaching workforce. To mitigate the gap, the ministry will create a state‑funded specialised training programme that allows current teachers to gain additional qualifications. The government also introduced uniform compensation subsidies for teachers working in high‑cost regions – Bratislava, Trnava and Košice – and has raised salaries in recent years.

Drucker highlighted the upcoming "salary‑automation" law, which will automatically adjust teachers’ pay each year from 2027 onward. Negotiations with the finance ministry will determine the scale of future wage increases and additional regional compensation. In 2023 about 2,700 teaching vacancies were posted on Edujobs, with the greatest demand in the Bratislava, Trnava and Nitra regions, while the fewest openings were in Prešov and Žilina. The most sought‑after subjects are mathematics, English, physics and Slovak language.