Iceland review - 2007, Qupperneq 30

36 ICELAND REVIEW
of workers have a degree, including 35 percent who are qualif ied
leikskóli teachers. “I believe that [the high ratio] is one of the reasons
people are staying and working, although they could be a little happier
about their wages. But they are working in something they want to
work in and this is giving them some meaning in their lives,” says
Gunnar Gíslason, head of Akureyri’s education department. “The uni­
versity has given the opportunity for people who have been work ing
in leikskóli before to go and learn to become leikskóli teachers. I think
we would be in trouble if there wasn’t a university here. I don’t think
so, I know so.”
Ragnhildur Erla Bjarnadóttir, head of Reykjavík’s leikskóli depart­
ment, agrees that it would be nice to have a higher proportion of teac­
hers, but she points out that such people simply do not exist in Reykja­
vík at the moment.
The basic structure of a leikskóli is that the children are divid­
ed into classes by age and each class has a head, supported
by assistants. In my school, the three class heads are teachers
and the assistants are not. But being qualif ied as a teacher
does not guarantee the job of class head, as in Akureyri for example,
where there are far more teachers than there are classes.
The University of Akureyri helps the town’s leikskóli system a great
deal, but Reykjavík also has a university (in fact it has four). One
explanation for why people are not keen on training to become leikskóli
teachers in the capital may be that those qualif ied as leikskóli and
primary school teachers are also attractive to private companies because
of the breadth of their studies and their often excellent interpersonal
skills. Private companies are helped in this respect by the general
perception that the leikskóli system does not pay well.
“It is very sad when everyone is talking about the salaries in the pre­
schools. Of course it would be great if we could pay higher wages, but
if you are a leikskóli teacher then your salary is not terribly low,”
Ragnhildur Erla Bjarnadóttir explains. “Of course, you can’t compare
it to the banking system or something like that. And for the people
who don’t have any formal education, one could say that their income
should be higher, but I think it is similar all over. I mean, maybe you
can get higher wages working in a shop, but then you would have to
put in a lot more hours every day. So I don’t think the basic salaries are
that much lower.”
However, the recent addition of new perks is making the job in
Reykjavík increasingly attractive: like an extra half hour’s pay, at the
overtime rate, every time a worker eats with the children (although at
my particular school, we have always done that anyway). So that’s
approxi mately a 12 percent pay raise for no extra work. We also now
get a free library card and free passes to the swimming pools and the
family zoo. Previous experience in other towns will now also be taken
into account when deciding a new employee’s pay level and a whole raft of
benefits apply to those with their own children under six years of age.
Still my leikskóli is one of only 30 in Reykjavík to be fully staffed this
year (although 15 are only short by one). Two of our 14 staff members
are foreigners and I think it’s fair to say that neither of us speaks f lawless
Icelandic. Working in a leikskóli is an excellent way to learn the
language and we both communicate well with the staff and children.
Our international inf luence is probably a positive thing, and while we
may not be as beneficial to the children’s development as f luent Ice­
landic speakers, we are certainly more beneficial than the lack of two
staff members would be.
The City of Reykjavík has 137 foreign leikskóli staff. Some leikskóli
schools have no foreign employees at all, and others have many. The
only official stipulation is that staff should be able to speak some Ice­
landic, unless they work in the kitchen or elsewhere away from the
kids. It is also worth noting that 600 of the children, that’s over 10
percent, are also from overseas.
However, from personal experience it seems Reykjavík’s provision
for teaching foreign employees Icelandic is strong on promise and
rather lighter on results. I am assured that the city does provide foreign
employees with language lessons, but I have never personally been
invited to attend any.
In contrast against Reykjavík, Akureyri’s leikskóli system currently
employs two foreigners, both of whom have been in Iceland for many
years. And there are 63 foreign leikskóli students from 30 countries, out
of a total of 1,050 children. “If we get many more foreign children in
our schools, I think we would try to get some people in to teach them
in their mother language,” says Gunnar Gíslason. “But there is no need
for that yet.”
It may sound a bit odd, but by working in a leikskóli I f ind myself
wondering if I might actually be exacerbating the staff ing crisis. I have
never hidden the fact that I took the position as a means to quickly
learn Icelandic. And to be perfectly honest, I was getting a bit desperate
to find a job. For those self ish reasons, I don’t qualify as the sort of
long­term career builder they are screaming out for. And as Ragnhildur
Erla Bjarnadóttir told me, “We have excellent people that have a lot of