"Final data will be available later but we think that schools will employ at least 1,000 fewer teachers in this academic year," the minister told a news conference.
According to him, about 27,000 teachers were employed in schools in the last academic year.
Steponavičius also noted that not all the teachers set to lose some of their workload would become jobless, adding that some of them would retire.
"If we look at the statistics, last year, more than 1,100 teachers were over the age of 65," the minister told journalists.
Some 1,269 municipal and state schools will start the new academic year on 1 September, nine schools fewer than last year.
School enrollment should be down by up to 20,000 students from 387,000 last year.
"Unfortunately, the sad demographic tendency is that fewer students attend schools each consecutive year, and it continues (...). On the other hand, we can say that the drop in the number of schools was slower than that of students – the number of students went down by nearly 25 percent since 2006-2007, while the number of schools decreased by 15 percent," the minister said.
Meanwhile, Steponavičius applauded growth tendencies in pre-school education – the enrollment has been on the rise over the past years and new kindergartens are being opened. He noted that the majority of pre-school institutions were private.
