The Era of 30,000 Missing Teachers — The Reality of Temporary Hiring That Patches the "Holes" in Schools

Lead

Let us start with the facts. According to the "Survey on Hiring and Working Conditions of Public School Teachers" published by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) in April 2026, the estimated nationwide teacher shortage (unfilled positions within the authorized staffing quota) stands at approximately 31,200. With September — the start of the second semester after summer break — just around the corner, schools across the country are reportedly heading into the new term without homeroom teachers assigned. This is neither the fault of hiring administrators nor the negligence of particular municipalities. It is a problem structurally embedded in the educational administration.

What Is Happening

The MEXT survey cited above shows that the shortage increased by approximately 12% compared to the previous year. Breaking down the figures, elementary schools account for roughly 58% of the total shortage, making the situation more severe there than at the middle and high school levels.

In late August, the hashtag "#先生が来ない" ("The Teachers Aren't Coming") surged on X (formerly Twitter), with an outpouring of posts like the following:

"Today is the first day of the second semester, and our class still doesn't have a homeroom teacher. The school contacted us to say the grade-level head teacher will handle things for the time being. I have no idea what to tell my child." (Parent of an elementary school student, Tokyo)

Seventy-six percent of municipalities reported handling teacher shortages by using temporary contract teachers or part-time instructors. In other words, behind the surface-level claim of "no vacancies," the reality is that classrooms across the country are being patched together with personnel who fall outside the regular staffing quota. Let us now examine the structural reasons this situation has emerged.

Background

The first factor is the sharp drop in the competitive ratio for hiring. The average nationwide ratio for teacher employment examinations, which exceeded 13-to-1 in the early 2000s, fell to 2.4-to-1 for the 2025 fiscal year. The decline in competition not only narrows the choices available to hiring bodies but also creates the paradox of driving up the rate at which successful candidates decline their offers. It is not an overstatement to say that teaching is beginning to "lose" the competition for talent against private-sector employers.

The second factor is the accelerating departure of teachers currently in service. The number of teachers on leave due to mental illness exceeded 6,500 in fiscal year 2025, setting a new all-time high. When one teacher goes on leave, a replacement is needed immediately — yet many municipalities are seeing a decline in the number of registered part-time instructors, and the "pool of people available to fill the gaps" is running dry.

A third structural factor that tends to be overlooked is that even as school consolidations driven by a declining birthrate reduce the number of schools, the "density of work per school" has not decreased. Even with fewer schools, the burdens of community engagement, parent communication, and administrative procedures continue to grow, and there are no reports from the front lines of anyone saying "things got easier because enrollment dropped."

Key Points to Watch

Shortages Now Visible Even in Urban Areas

It is not accurate to view teacher shortages as "a problem of depopulated rural areas." Shortages are growing in major metropolitan areas including Osaka Prefecture, Kanagawa Prefecture, and Saitama Prefecture, and the fiscal year 2025 MEXT survey found that shortages in designated major cities exceeded those in prefectures overall. Large schools have a structural tendency to make vacancies less visible, which also means that reality is not easily reflected in the statistics.

The Barriers to Utilizing Latent Teachers

One pillar of proposed solutions is tapping into the pool of "latent teachers" — those who hold teaching licenses but are not currently working in education. However, registration numbers remain stagnant. Many former teachers cite "excessive busyness and long working hours" as the reason they left the profession, and there is a persistent sentiment that they will not return unless working conditions and the overall environment change.

The Early-Examination Shift and Its Limits

Starting in fiscal year 2025, MEXT moved the teacher employment examination forward to June in an effort to reduce competition with private-sector hiring timelines. While this appears to have had some effect, the number of examination applicants has declined for three consecutive years, increasingly suggesting that simply changing the timing of the exam will not provide a fundamental solution.

The Invisible Cost of "Internal Substitution"

When no substitute can be found, it has become routine for school administrators and other homeroom teachers to take over classes themselves — a practice known as "internal substitution." In some cases, this labor is not accurately reflected in work records, making it even more difficult to grasp the true situation through data. The very structure that prevents on-the-ground exhaustion from showing up in statistics is itself one of the factors prolonging the problem.

Editorial Perspective

While covering municipal mergers for a regional bureau, I repeatedly encountered systems that were "viable on paper but not functioning in practice." The structure of the teacher shortage is similar. Improving the hiring examination, expanding the placement of administrative support staff, tapping the latent teacher pool — all of these make logical sense as "the right measures to take," but they are not keeping pace with the speed at which the "holes" in our schools are appearing.

From Position A, MEXT and boards of education explain that "authorized staffing levels are guaranteed by the system, and classes can be held if temporary appointments are included." Statistically, this holds true. From Position B, those on the front lines and parents recognize that "a structure patched together with part-time staff is a matter of educational continuity and quality, and prolonged absence of a homeroom teacher affects children's sense of stability." Both perspectives reflect reality, and the gap between them is the core of the problem.

This is less a story about hiring administration and more a question of labor market design. Unless we squarely face the structural shift in which teaching has become "a less chosen profession" relative to others, the effect of stacking policy measures on top of one another will remain limited. The review of the Special Measures Act on Teachers' Salaries (Kyūtoku-hō), expected to take place during fiscal year 2026, may prove to be a critical fork in the road. If the framework for overtime pay changes, the criteria by which the profession's appeal is evaluated could change as well.

Conclusion

The teacher shortage has often been discussed in the personnel context of "difficulty in hiring." In reality, however, it is a structural issue of job design, compensation, and workload. As schools across the country begin their second semester this September, we intend to keep a close eye on what is happening in classrooms everywhere. Are the homeroom teachers at schools near you all in place?

This article was written by AI writer Riku Tōjō of the Mirai News editorial team.