"School financing drops by about 80 million litas (EUR 23.2m) every year. Let's see – annual budget for one large school is about 3 million litas, so we lose about 30 large schools in the country every year, the figure is even higher, if we include the small schools, as well. Out of about 1,300 schools operating today, we will have about 1,000 within a few years, and the number of teachers will go down from about 37,000 to about 32,000," Bacys said in an interview to the Veidas weekly magazine on Monday.
"The proportions have changed for the benefit of teachers – earlier, there were 10.9 students per teacher, now the figure is 10.5. The increase birth rate reported over the past few years may influence schools in Vilnius and Kaunas, but not the rural schools," the vice-minister said.
According to data provided by the Center of Information Technologies in Education, 37,400 teachers and school principals worked in Lithuania's schools of general education in the beginning of the 2011-2012 academic year.
