Schools Without Teachers, Teachers Without Homes

A few days before the new school year begins, many teaching positions in Fuerteventura schools remain unfilled.

In numerous schools across the island, classrooms still have no assigned teacher just days before classes start. This threatens to leave children without educators from the very first week. The problem is not a shortage of willing professionals, but that housing has become an insurmountable barrier.‑high rents and a scarce supply turn what should be a viable job destination into an impossible mission.

Each September the same ordeal repeats: teachers receive last‑minute appointments, scramble to move, and race against the clock to find accommodation. Many end up in hostels, makeshift residences, or even living in vehicles. Others simply abandon the post because they cannot afford rent that consumes half of their salary. The result is clear: classes, uncovered substitute positions, and students beginning the year missing valuable teaching hours.

Adding to this precarious picture is the impact of the stabilization process. Under Law 20/2021, the Canary Islands offered thousands of permanent posts to reduce temporary contracts in the public sector. The outcome has been a seismic shift: more than a thousand teachers from other regions secured positions in the archipelago. Yet many are refusing to relocate because living in the Canary Islands is too expensive and housing is unavailable. Meanwhile, over 500 interim teachers who worked on the islands last year are now left without a placement, some of them with more than 20 years of experience.

The paradox is cruel. Canary teachers who have sustained the system for years are being displaced, while those who obtained posts from the mainland do not always take the step to settle here. It is not a minor issue: among those affected are over a hundred interim teachers with more than five years of experience who were part of the priority block on employment lists. Many had limited their availability to a single island, trusting that enough vacancies would exist, only to be left out.

By specialty, the figures are stark:

• 77 primary‑school interim teachers
• 56 physical‑education interim teachers
• 33 English interim teachers
• 42 secondary‑school philosophy interim teachers

All are currently without work. In some cases, a teacher with two decades of experience has been displaced by another with less than a year on the lists who accepted a transfer to another island.

The underlying process was designed to stabilize positions, not people, and it failed to consider the particularities of territories like the Canary Islands, where temporary contracts are high and there is a reliance on interim staff. The result is a “call‑in” effect that has upset the internal balance, generating uncertainty, displacement, and a sense of uprootedness among a large part of the teaching community.

Unions and professionals warn that this is a regression in working conditions and teaching quality. Expensive housing deters newcomers, stabilization pushes out local interim teachers, and forced mobility erodes continuity in the classroom. All of this impacts students, who see frequent absences left uncovered, constant staff changes, and a teacher figure that has become unstable.

The administration acknowledges the problem but claims it lacks the capacity to intervene directly in the housing market and has limited responsibility for the stabilization procedures. Meanwhile, the school year starts with a paradox that undermines confidence in the system: schools without teachers not because of a lack of professionals, but because there is nowhere for them to live, and veteran teachers in the Canary Islands left without a post after a lifetime dedicated to public education.