Teachers from Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera will be able to retire at 70 years old

PalmaTeachers in Menorca, Ibiza, and Formentera will be able to continue working until age 70 if they request it from the 2026-2027 academic year onwards. The Minister of Education and Universities, Antoni Vera, announced this Wednesday that the Ministry will approve an instruction with new criteria to authorize retirement extensions for teaching civil servants over 65 years of age, which will differentiate the conditions according to the needs of each island.

Until now, teachers could request an extension of their stay in active service once they turned 65 and continue working until 70, provided that the Ministry authorized the extension.

Lack of teachers

With the new instruction, the Government will adapt this procedure to the difficulties in covering certain specialties. Thus, in Menorca, Ibiza, and Formentera, extensions will be authorized for teachers who request them, with the aim of facilitating the coverage of staff in islands where the shortage of teachers continues to be a difficulty.

The situation will be different in Mallorca. On this island, extensions will only be granted to teachers who are part of the management teams or to those who occupy positions qualified as difficult to cover. With this criterion, the Ministry intends to guarantee continuity in the management of the centers when necessary and, at the same time, maintain coverage of the specialties with more problems finding teachers.

As Vera explained, the modification responds to the differentiated reality of the educational system of each island. While in Menorca, Ibiza, and Formentera the difficulties in incorporating teachers in various specialties persist, in Mallorca the situation is less tense and allows for more restrictive criteria to be applied. The instruction will come into effect next school year and will regulate the new conditions for granting retirement extensions for teaching civil servants who wish to continue working beyond the age of 65.

Union rejection

The STEI has rejected the measure announced by the Ministry of Education for three main reasons. Firstly, the union denounces that the possibility for teachers in Menorca, Ibiza, and Formentera to continue working until the age of 70 has not been negotiated at the Sectoral Table of Education.

Furthermore, the organization argues that the priority should be to reinstate voluntary retirement at 60 years old for all teaching staff, rather than extending working life. According to STEI, the current situation of the collective is marked by "tiredness and discomfort," which, in their opinion, makes a measure of this type inadequate.

Finally, the union considers that the Government should promote structural measures to address the shortage of teachers in the Balearic Islands, especially in Menorca, Ibiza, and Formentera. In this regard, it calls for action on the housing problem, which it identifies as one of the main causes of the difficulty in filling positions, and maintains that the announced proposal is "another patch" that does not resolve the underlying problem.