There are no more bids: how teaching vacancies are closed by overworking
The average teacher workload continues to grow: in the 2025-2026 academic year, it increased in 44 regions out of 85. In most of them, the average rate is above 1.5. At the same time, experts note that the teacher's employment of more than one and a half rates damages the educational process. Izvestia found out why the rate is higher in some regions than in others, what it depends on and how to solve the problem.
What is the burden on teachers in Russia
The Teacher Trade Union in its research (available in Izvestia) He reports that most of the time the increase in the average workload for teachers in the past academic year was insignificant. However, the trend towards high loads persists: in most regions, this is on average more than 1.5 rates (one rate is 18 hours).
The most significant growth occurred in the republics of Khakassia and Karachay-Cherkessia, the Chukotka and Jewish Autonomous Districts, as well as in the Kirov Region — by 0.05 or more. At the same time, in the 2024-2025 academic year in the Kirov region, the average teacher worked at 1.6 rates, and in the 2025-2026 academic year — at 1.76. The union notes that the increase in workload is most often associated with the dismissal of teachers due to poor working conditions and the redistribution of available hours among other teachers.
According to the study, the largest workload for teachers was in the Udmurt Republic (2.03 rates per teacher), in the Chukotka Autonomous District (2 rates), Omsk (1.95), Sakhalin (1.88) and Kostroma regions (1.85). The average rate is more than 1.8 in eight other regions: Kemerovo, Astrakhan, Orel and Chelyabinsk regions, Krasnoyarsk and Khabarovsk Territories, the Republics of Bashkortostan and Karachay-Cherkessia.
The best teacher workload situation is in the republics of Ingushetia, Mordovia, Chechnya, Karelia, Komi, as well as in Moscow and the Belgorod Region. In these seven regions, the average amount of work is below 1.4 percent, and in Ingushetia and Mordovia it is even less than 1.3 percent.
The Teacher trade union also estimated the number of open vacancies in each of the regions (according to official data from the Ministry of Education). It turned out that these two indicators are not always dependent on each other. For example, in Udmurtia, the region with the highest teacher workload, 220 vacancies have been opened. At the same time, in Chukotka, with a similar workload, only two positions are vacant. Meanwhile, in regions with low teacher workload, there are no open vacancies only in Ingushetia. There are 11 of them in Mordovia, 21 in Chechnya, 100 in Karelia, and 38 in the Belgorod Region.
The situation is even more complicated with the shortage of speech therapists, speech pathologists and psychologists. There are many more vacant positions here, and the workload significantly exceeds the standard.
— In 62 regions out of 85, the workload of speech pathologists exceeds 1.7 rates on average. Of these, it is higher than three rates in five regions. In 11 regions, the ratio of vacancy rates to existing standards of care exceeds 20%, and in another 23 regions it ranges from 10 to 20%," the Teacher's trade union says.
For example, 111 speech therapy teachers should work in educational institutions of the Astrakhan region, but their actual number (excluding part-timers and working under civil law contracts) is 42 employees, and there are 37 vacant positions. There should be 104 teachers of speech pathology in the region, but only 31 teachers actually work. There are also 176 educational psychologists in the region, but only 92 people work.
This problem is also noticeable in the whole country. In particular, according to defectologists, according to official data from the Ministry of Education, by the beginning of the 2025-2026 academic year, the number of unfilled rates was almost 2.9 thousand (this is 13% of the total number). The closed rates are actually filled with two times fewer specialists than they should be: the burden on defectologists, according to Izvestia's calculations, averages 1.9 rates per person in Russia.
How long has the workload on teachers been increasing?
Izvestia's calculation based on the annually published documents of the Ministry of Education "Information on the form of Federal statistical observation No. OO-1" showed that the national average for the beginning of the 2023-2024 academic year was 1.48 teacher workload. Before the start of the 2024-2025 academic year, it was 1.51, and in 2025-2026 it was 1.53.
Irina Abankina, a professor at the HSE Institute of Education, also confirms in a conversation with Izvestia the continuation of the trend towards increasing the burden on teachers.
— It is not possible to cope with the shortage of personnel. The situation in the regions is different, and many factors affect both the workload of teachers and the dynamics of its increase. It is alarming that it is young people who leave school, since no labor standards regulating workload actually come into effect, no matter how much it is said," she points out.
Meanwhile, Alexey Tishchenko, a leading researcher at the Center for Economics of Continuing Education (CEN) at the Presidential Academy, recalls that the trend towards an increase in teacher workload has been observed since 2016, when it amounted to 1.31 rates.
Moreover, according to the Ministry of Education, the situation with the additional volume of work in cities is worse than in villages: 1.58 versus 1.53 rates. This, as Boris Ilyukhin, a senior researcher at the Center for Economics of Continuing Education (CEN) at the Presidential Academy, explains, is due to the fact that in parallel, one class and the total number of hours are not so large — and this leads to the fact that the teacher leads not only different classes, but also different subjects, often non-core for themselves. This may not even affect the formal workload in hours. It is even higher in urban schools that work in two shifts, the expert added.
It should be noted that in April last year, the Ministry of Education stated that from September 1, school teachers should teach no more than five to six lessons per day, and the average workload was proposed to be increased to 1.4 percent.
— From 18 to 24 hours a week is the level that does not affect the quality of education and allows the teacher to develop professionally, devote enough time to the educational process, mentoring, — says Irina Abankina. — 1.4 bets are already at the limit of possibilities, and one and a half bets are already 27 hours and above — an excessive load. This is turning into what used to be called unaccompanied teaching in project and research activities, in various educational practices, which are now actively being introduced into schools, penetrating into each of the subjects.
Izvestia sent a request to the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation. No response has been received at the time of publication.
Why is the load increasing and what does it depend on?
The increase in workload is primarily due to an increase in the number of schoolchildren, Alexey Tishchenko believes. Between 2016 and 2025, their number increased by 16.9%, while the number of teachers decreased by 0.7%.
"But the decline in the total number of students that has begun will not lead to a proportional reduction in the burden on the general education system in the coming years, since the number of students in middle and high schools will remain or decrease at a slower pace," the expert clarifies.
Another reason is that the increased workload makes it possible to comply with presidential decrees and bring teachers' salaries up to the average salary in the region's economy. Therefore, local authorities are interested in recycling teachers. At the same time, for many teachers, this is the only way to get good money, Irina Abankina adds.
However, regions that do not experience problems with an increased workload for teachers cannot be called rich. The Teacher trade union explains this by saying that people in them are willing to work, including for small salaries.
"The other day, a young teacher from Dagestan explained to me why there is no Teacher trade union in Dagestan schools: every employee values his place because there is no work at all," Vsevolod Lukhovitsky, co—chairman of the trade union, explains to Izvestia. — The well-being of the region in terms of teacher workload as a whole depends on many factors. It is important, for example, the presence or absence of vocational training institutions that train teachers. For example, in Michurinsk, Tambov region, there is a socio-pedagogical institute at Michurinsk State Agrarian University, and it annually graduates teachers in all subjects, but there has been no work in the city's schools for a long time.
The connection with the cost of the rate is also obvious: it is easier to force teachers to work with a heavy workload if there are people willing from other regions to come and work in any conditions, just to receive a salary higher than at home, the expert notes. This applies, for example, to Moscow and the Moscow region, where there is a large influx from subsidized regions.
A lot depends on the size of the subject. Comparing the situations in Chukotka and Udmurtia, where there is a very large difference in the number of vacancies with the same teacher workload, it should be borne in mind that in the Chukotka Autonomous District there are only about 500 rates and 299 employees, while in the Udmurt Republic there are many more.
Dmitry Kazakov, the chairman of the trade union, who himself comes from the Nizhny Novgorod region, is familiar with the situation in Udmurtia and Mordovia. He explains the diametrically opposite situations in these regions by low salaries. In the first republic, even if a person works for two jobs, they will receive very low wages, which is why people are in no hurry to fill vacant positions.
— In Mordovia, on the contrary, wages are very low, but there is practically no work. They stick to school, where the earnings are small, but constant and with their own preferences," he points out.
At the same time, many teachers in Chukotka work from September to the end of May, receiving a good salary due to northern allowances and an increased rate — this is a kind of teacher's shift.
The Teacher trade union notes that the statistics themselves are not formed quite obviously: schools transmit data partly at their discretion. For example, they may decide that there is no need to declare a vacant rate, because someone is already filling it.
In one of the Khabarovsk schools, in particular, by September 1 there were no geography teachers, and the director called on classroom teachers to teach this subject.
"The teacher's council strongly suggested that we teach geography in our classes and told us to prepare mentally, that we would also need to teach housing and communal services, even though all teachers at school already work at 1.8 and more rates," says a teacher from a comprehensive school in Khabarovsk. — If someone tries to refuse, the director will be shocked. He was surprised today when people refused to take additional geography on their shoulders.
How to solve the problem
Tatyana Kupriyanova, Deputy Chairman of the All-Russian Education Trade Union, recalls that Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 498 dated July 20, 2026 "On additional measures to support teachers" explicitly instructed the government to ensure "improvement of requirements for teachers' working hours and the amount of their workload" within six months.
However, this can only be implemented together with an increase in the guaranteed part of the salary — otherwise it is difficult to resolve the issue, the editorial interlocutor emphasized. According to her, there are now chances that it will be possible to achieve a salary increase, including thanks to the decisions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation adopted in September 2024 and March 2025, which confirmed that teachers' salary rates cannot be lower than the minimum wage.
— They have become a natural incentive to increase attention to this issue, to increase the guaranteed part of wages. This issue is now in the sphere of attention of the president, the government, the Ministry of Education, and the trade union," the expert points out. — We know that work has already accelerated in the regions to bring wage rates up to the minimum wage. As of early August, teacher rates in 13 regions have been raised to or above the minimum wage.
However, in 12 regions of the Russian Federation, the teacher's rate is still set at below 12 thousand rubles, she admits.
In addition, work is underway to streamline the lists of compensation and incentive payments for teachers and transfer them to absolute amounts, "in order to speed up the process of increasing the guaranteed part of the salaries of teachers and other teaching staff — rates and salaries."
The burden on teachers, as Tatiana Kupriyanova believes, is a multifactorial problem that depends on the availability of staff, curriculum, etc. In her opinion, there is a very weak influx of young teachers to remote areas, for whom additional payments do not compensate for the lack of infrastructure, roads, and cultural life. At the same time, school leaders often reject young professionals in favor of increasing the burden on "proven" and experienced employees, because this is a simpler and more reliable way.
Nevertheless, the issue of remuneration remains a key way to solve the problem — and here teachers need a transparent, understandable and fair system that will ensure, on the one hand, the opportunity to receive a decent salary for an acceptable number of working hours, and, on the other hand, attract new staff to schools, the expert summarizes.
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