On Thursday 18 June 2026, the Association of Secondary School Teachers with A1 qualifications (APESS) warned that Luxembourg's education system risks undermining academic depth and devaluing the role of subject-matter experts as part of ongoing discussions on the modernisation of secondary school curricula.
In a new position paper sent this week to the Chamber of Deputies, Luxembourg's Ministry of the Economy and FEDIL, APESS argued that the country's schools were moving away from academic depth and systematically devaluing the role of subject-matter experts. According to APESS, recent labour market data points to a growing demand for highly qualified specialists in fields such as science, technology, engineering, mathematics and languages, while proposed education reforms place increasing emphasis on transversal skills and competency-based learning.
"The world of work is changing rapidly through artificial intelligence and robotics. The economy needs fewer and fewer routine workers, but increasingly more highly qualified cognitive experts," said Gilles Everling, President of APESS. "Recent figures from Fondation IDEA (May 2026) show a clear shortage of STEM graduates in Luxembourg, while ADEM is warning of an acute shortage of engineers and IT specialists."
APESS warned against what it described as a systematic erosion of theoretical knowledge and subject expertise in secondary schools. The union argued that the education reform discussions led by Luxembourg's Ministry of Education, Children and Youth placed increasing emphasis on transversal "21st century skills", while pushing teachers towards the role of learning facilitators. According to APESS, this pedagogical shift was accompanied by an institutional one, with the academic A1 career path (Master's degree / Bac+5) becoming increasingly devalued as the extensive theoretical training required was no longer rewarded proportionately compared to other teaching career paths.
"It is absurd: the Luxembourg state invests in bringing highly qualified experts into schools, yet increasingly expects them to act as 'learning facilitators' who moderate students on digital platforms,” Gilles Everling said. "There is a tendency to promote the illusion that teachers will have a dual role in the future. In practice, however, this support role is gradually replacing genuine subject expertise. Cognitive knowledge cannot simply be 'facilitated' — it must be taught by real experts. It is time to focus once again on depth, rather than outsourcing knowledge and competencies to machines."
APESS called for the role of teachers as "epistemological auditors" to be restored to the centre of the education system and for the A1 career path to be recognised and protected as a national strategic resource in order to preserve academic excellence and support Luxembourg's future economic needs.
Further information is available in APESS's position paper, The A1 Career as a National Strategic Resource, published at: https://zenodo.org/records/20723713.
