The shortage of music teachers is on the rise in many countries, posing a threat to the sustainability of the music teaching profession. On the other hand, the existing literature on the investigation of music teacher recruitment primarily focuses on the recruitment of students for music teaching degrees, comparatively neglecting the recruitment of music teachers within the labor market. Employing a qualitative case-study research design, I aim to investigate the sustainability of the policy for public recruitment of music teachers according to the perspective of prospective applicants to secondary schools in Andalusia. The case under investigation involves two cohorts of last-year pre-service secondary-school music teachers (n = 30) based in Andalusia. The perspectives of the participants predominantly lean toward the negative, suggesting the unsustainability of the policy under examination. Indeed, the recruitment system is perceived to embody a bureaucratic, depersonalized, and denaturalized process; one that, according to the participants, misaligns with the professional reality of music teachers as they perceive it. In addition, I discuss how these findings resonate with previous research and propose potential avenues for policymakers.
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