with the number of students significantly increasing it is necessary to both hire more teachers and retain the current ones a deficit of teachers and preschool teachers is expected by skolverket national agency for education ii compared to its peer countries sweden is placed below germany but above austria and the netherlands and respectively considering the division of the index by socioeconomic profiles swedish principals working in the bottom quarter of schools report that the shortage of teaching staff to a greater extent hinders the schools instruction capacity than the oecd average compared to