In Latvia, we have been talking for years about the need to change the structure of our economy, increase productivity, and create more products with high added value. In the forest and timber industry, this is also one of the most critical development issues. We want to export not just raw materials or relatively simple products, but an increasing number of technologically complex materials, engineering solutions, wooden structures, chemical products, and other innovations.
Yet, in this discussion, economic policy is too often separated from education policy. As if companies, exports, productivity, and innovation were on one side, and schools, teachers, and curriculum were on the other. In reality, it is a single system. A high value-added product does not begin on the factory floor. It starts much earlier, at the moment when a student learns mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and technology, when they learn to analyse, calculate, experiment, and understand cause-and-effect relationships.
Without this knowledge, neither modern industry, bioeconomy, wood chemistry, the development of new materials, nor automation is possible. Artificial intelligence does not negate the need for fundamental knowledge, either. On the contrary, the more accessible technological tools become, the more important it is for a person to understand what to do with them, to evaluate the results, and to create something new.
This is precisely why what we are seeing in education right now is alarming. The OECD PISA 2025 results show that the average performance of students in OECD countries across several skills, especially in reading, has reached its lowest level ever recorded. In mathematics, the decline has been particularly pronounced since 2018. Latvia cannot watch this trend from the sidelines either. This is a question about the knowledge of our future workforce and, consequently, about our economic prospects ten or twenty years from now.
The shortage of teachers is no longer a future risk
It is particularly telling that, alongside discussions about student knowledge, the shortage of teachers—including in mathematics and the natural sciences—is becoming an increasingly loud issue. The recently published OECD “Education at a Glance 2026” report pays particular attention to this problem. In Latvia, the proportion of unfilled teaching positions in primary and secondary education has grown from 1 percent in the 2017/2018 academic year to 3 percent in the 2024/2025 academic year. In the senior classes, the situation is even more complex, with 3.9 percent of positions remaining vacant. The State Audit Office’s February 2026 audit report also concluded that Latvia has failed to ensure equally high-quality primary education, and that the volume of curriculum mastered varies significantly between schools.
Even more worrying is another figure. In 2024, 12 percent of fully qualified primary and secondary school teachers in Latvia left the teaching profession. The OECD average was 6.4 percent. This means that the problem is not just about training new teachers. We are also struggling to keep those professionals in schools who have already been trained and have gained experience.
The OECD concludes that the problems of attracting teachers are in many places particularly pronounced specifically in mathematics and the natural sciences. This is not surprising. Companies, research institutes, and other sectors compete with schools for people with strong knowledge of mathematics, physics, chemistry, or technology. If the education system loses this competition for a prolonged period, the consequences will not remain confined to school walls.
A chain reaction is forming that cannot be ignored. Teachers are lacking, opportunities to provide quality STEM education are diminishing, and youth interest in and knowledge of these fields is weakening; fewer young people choose engineering and the natural sciences, and then, after several years, it becomes even harder for companies and research organisations to find the specialists they need.
At this point, the question is no longer just about whether it is possible to fill a school timetable. The question is about the competitiveness of Latvia’s national economy.
This can be seen very clearly in the forestry sector. Modern timber processing is no longer an industry where understanding wood and the production process is enough. It increasingly relies on data analysis, automation, robotics, materials science, chemistry, energy, digital technologies, and engineering. In wood chemistry, solutions are being sought to create new materials and substances from wood components. In timber construction, deep knowledge of physics, mathematics, material properties, and design is required. Automated systems are playing an increasingly important role in production.
The higher we want to climb up the value-added chain, the more knowledge is required.
Educational content must anticipate where the economy is heading
That is why we must connect the conversation about education with the conversation about Latvia’s economic development much more closely. If the state sets the bioeconomy, smart specialisation, technological development, and productivity growth as priorities, then the education system must have a very clear answer as to what knowledge will be needed by the people who will implement these priorities.
This does not mean turning schools into places for training employees for specific industries. The task of general education is much broader. However, it is unacceptable for the education system and the national economy to develop in parallel worlds, meeting only at the moment when entrepreneurs announce that they are lacking engineers, technologists, chemists, or other specialists.
Then it is already too late.
A specialist is not created in a few months. Before an engineering degree, there is school. Before studies in chemistry, there is a teacher who helped a young person understand the subject. Before a research career, there are first experiments in the lab and an interest in why things happen the way they do. If a break occurs in this chain, it cannot be compensated for by a single higher education programme or company training course.
Therefore, the shortage of teachers in STEM subjects must not be viewed merely as a problem for the Ministry of Education and Science or local governments. It is a matter for the national economy. Companies, industry organisations, universities, research institutes, and the state must seek much closer models of cooperation. Students need to see where a mathematical formula, a law of physics, or a chemistry experiment is used in real production and research. Teachers, in turn, need the opportunity to regularly familiarise themselves with technological developments and understand how the industries change where their students might work in a few years.
It is equally important to restore the importance of STEM subjects in the public consciousness. Not every young person needs to become an engineer or a chemist. However, mathematical thinking, an understanding of the natural sciences, and the ability to work with technology are becoming core competencies in very many professions.
Latvia’s economy truly needs a significant development boost. However, this cannot be achieved solely through investment programmes, new equipment, or support instruments for companies. Equipment can be bought. Technology can be imported. A factory can be built. A person with deep knowledge cannot be ordered and delivered after a year.
The development of such individuals takes many years, and school is one of the most important stages in this process.
That is why the signals currently seen in education must be taken very seriously. The shortage of teachers, the difficulties in retaining them in the profession, and the decline in student knowledge are not isolated problems of the education system. They are early warnings about Latvia’s ability to sustain the economy we ourselves wish to build in the future.
We cannot simultaneously demand increasingly complex, technologically intensive, and higher value-added products from our economy while accepting that the foundation of knowledge upon which such an economy must rely is weakening.
If Latvia wants an economy whose value is created by knowledge, then knowledge must become a question of economic policy back in the schoolroom.