A teacher residency and a teaching career: how Spain could look after its teachers

Democracia 21's launch speech in Madrid on 10 October 2026 asks Spain to look after its teachers much better. We agree, and this is what a radical-centre answer looks like in practice: a paid teacher residency built on the logic of the medical MIR, and a teaching career that rewards responsibility as well as years served.

Start with where teachers stand today. TALIS 2024, the OECD's big survey of teachers, published in October 2025, finds Spanish teachers among the most satisfied anywhere: 95% say they are happy in their job, against 89% across the OECD. The weak point is stability. According to the Science Media Centre Spain's summary of the survey, 31% of Spanish teachers are on temporary contracts, against 19% in the OECD and 17% in the EU, and the figure has barely moved from 33% in 2018. These are the interinos, and many of them walk into their first classroom with very little support. The experts the SMC consulted, Xavier Bonal among them, point to the same gaps: Spanish teachers rate their initial training more critically than their colleagues elsewhere, few say they are ever evaluated, and mentoring programmes fall short.

Most of Europe starts teachers off differently. Eurydice's report Teachers in Europe (2021) found that induction for new teachers is compulsory in most European systems, usually lasts a year and rests on mentoring by an experienced teacher. In Spain and Cyprus it lasts six months at most, and in Spain its content depends on the region. Luxembourg, Hungary, Malta and Norway give new teachers two years, and England moved to a two-year statutory induction in September 2021. A first year with a mentor is the European norm.

What is already on the table

The education ministry has seen this for years. In January 2022 it presented unions and regions with "24 proposals" for reforming the teaching profession, as the LOMLOE required. Educaweb's summary lists the main ones: entrance tests for teaching degrees and for the secondary teaching master's, a longer practicum with co-teaching, a dual model that alternates university and school with a stronger role for the school tutor, and a practical phase after passing the oposición, in a school, with a training plan, supervised by experienced teachers and assessed at the end. It also proposed a new evaluation system so that teachers could progress and earn more, starting from a self-assessment and involving the school's leadership and the inspectorate. The unions split. UGT called it incomplete because it left out pay, hours and ratios; STEs saw only tougher demands; ANPE welcomed it and asked for a full teacher statute.

Workload is the part that has moved furthest. The government's bill on ratios and teaching hours caps teaching time in public schools at 23 hours a week in infant, primary and special education and 18 hours in other levels, and limits classes to 22 pupils in primary and 25 in ESO. In June 2026 Congress rejected the amendments to the whole bill, so it carries on through Parliament, with a phase-in from 2027–28 to full application in 2031–32.

Catalonia, meanwhile, has already built a residency. Its Sensei programme, co-financed by the European Social Fund Plus at 95% for its first two years and 40% for the next three, runs in 55 schools chosen for their practice, 33 primary and 22 secondary. According to the Catalan education department's presentation to INTEF, 85 mentor teachers are freed for up to half their teaching hours, and the programme was offered to 500 novice teachers from the interim list, 250 in 2023–24 and 250 in 2024–25. Each one is appointed as an interino, half-time, for a school year, with 250 hours of training and co-teaching alongside experienced colleagues, and finishes with an observation cycle assessed by the inspectorate or the head. Mentoring itself stays supportive and non-evaluative. The government agreement creating the programme commits Catalonia to evaluating both how it was implemented and what it achieved.

A residency and a career

Medicine settled a similar question decades ago. Under Royal Decree 1146/2006, a resident doctor works on a special employment contract: one year, renewed for each year of the programme after a positive annual evaluation, with a base salary tied to staff holding the same degree and a training supplement that grows from 8% in the second year to 38% in the fifth. The resident has the right to take on responsibility progressively. Doctors learn on the job, they are paid for it, and someone checks their progress every year.

The left has a strong case here. Teachers need stable, well-paid public jobs and workloads that leave time to prepare, so the ratios law should go ahead and the regions should turn structural interim posts into permanent ones until the temporary rate falls towards the European level. The market-liberal tradition has a strong case too. A career should reward evaluated work and the responsibilities a teacher takes on, as the ministry's own 2022 proposal on evaluation suggested, and heads should have room to build their teams around a school project, including choosing which residents and mentors work with them.

The piece that belongs to neither camp ties these together. Every new teacher does a paid two-year residency in an accredited partner school. The first year comes with a reduced timetable, co-teaching and a mentor; the second with a full timetable and the mentor still there. The final assessment is the supervised practical phase the 2022 proposals already described, done properly. Mentoring becomes a rung of the career: release from half the timetable, as in Sensei, a pay supplement, and recognition that counts towards progression. Experienced teachers get a way up that keeps them in the classroom, and the extra money goes to a role that is evaluated, which is something both camps can sign.

Jennifer Pahlka's lesson on delivery applies directly. The people who carry this out are heads, mentors and the residents themselves, and the hard parts are practical: freeing mentor hours without leaving classes uncovered, matching residents to schools, keeping the paperwork light. Design those with schools and test them with real users before writing the decree.

Then follow Karl Popper and reform one piece at a time. Catalonia can extend Sensei to two years, and two or three other regions can start their own versions, with a comparison group of schools or cohorts that join later, chosen by lot where places are short. Measure how many residents are still teaching three years on, how pupils do, and what mentors and residents report about their workload. Publish the results, fix the design, and take it national once the numbers hold up.