Germany's schools are running out of teachers. There are recipes to stop the negative trend – more foreign educators, for example. But the bureaucracy is on the brakes.
Demonstration in front of the school authority in Frankfurt am Main
If the German education system were graded, it would probably get a “poor”. In schools, the plaster is crumbling from the walls, toilets are neglected and gymnasiums are almost permanently closed for repair work. Lessons are canceled regularly. And with the much-needed digitization, things are progressing in tiny steps at best. More and more students are in danger of falling behind. The Corona crisis finally revealed the failures in the classrooms.
Part of the German infrastructure crisis
Parents know from bitter experience: There is sheer misery around the chalk board and school desk. Ironically, in comparatively prosperous Germany. The educational misery is just as much a result of mismanagement and bad planning as a key indicator of the infrastructure crisis in the Federal Republic of Germany. At the same time, the demands on school policy have increased, since they are supposed to help solve social problems – such as integration and democratic social education.
Schools suffer most from a massive teacher shortage. “We are currently assuming that there are 30,000 to 40,000 vacancies. According to the Conference of Ministers of Education, 12,000 jobs are missing. There is a big difference in the assessment,” says the head of the Robert Bosch Foundation's education department, Dagmar Wolf, of the Germans Wave.
One of many dilapidated gyms in German schools
The German Teachers' Association explains the difference by saying that the figures from the Conference of Ministers of Education have been embellished. In many federal states, the hours at the beginning of the school year are canceled depending on the teacher shortage, so that the demand is only covered on paper, the association is quoted as saying in a report by the editorial network Germany (RND). Sometimes parents or other non-educators are also used as so-called school helpers and accounted for as teachers in the statistics. According to the figures published by the Conference of Ministers of Education this January, a total of almost 833,000 teachers were employed in Germany in 2021.
Largest shortage of teachers for 50 years
“The alarm bells have been ringing for a long time. We've had a teacher shortage for ten years. However, I can't remember such drama and sharpness as we are experiencing now. And I've been in the business for a long time,” says the President of the German Teachers' Association, Heinz-Peter Meidinger, in a DW interview. In his estimation, it is “the biggest shortage of teachers in 50 years”.
Covid-19 Special: Children and schools in the pandemic
And that's how two thirds (67 percent) of the The greatest challenge for school administrations is the lack of pedagogical staff. This was the result of the German School Barometer published a few days ago by the Robert Bosch Foundation. In socially disadvantaged locations, as many as 80 percent said so.
The other problems seem almost irrelevant in comparison. The study mentioned, among other things, the sluggish pace of digitization (22 percent), too much bureaucracy (21 percent) and a high personal workload (20 percent). For the representative school barometer, the opinion research institute Forsa surveyed 1,055 school administrators online between the end of October and mid-November last year.
Teachers' Association boss Heinz-Peter Meidinger sees three main causes for the pedagogical misery. Firstly, politicians have reacted too late to the rise in births that has been going on for twelve years. “And thirdly: There were refugee movements. Like now from the Ukraine with 200,000 additional children within a year. The schools were not prepared for that.”
The German Economic Institute calculated how many teachers are needed for these students alone: If 3.5 percent of the approximately 7.5 million Ukrainian children and young people come to Germany, which corresponds to 261,000 minors, 13,500 additional teachers are needed. With a flight rate of 5 percent – i.e. for 373,000 underage refugees – 19,400 more educators are needed than before.
Up to 80,000 unfilled positions in the future
The greatest shortage of teachers is yet to come. “We are entering a time when the baby boomer generation is about to retire. That will exacerbate the situation dramatically,” says Dagmar Wolf. According to researchers, “by 2030 we will have more than 80,000 vacancies in the teaching profession”. The goal of inclusion is that everyone is accepted and can participate in society on an equal footing and independently – regardless of gender, age, origin or state of health.
Classrooms are still unimaginable without chalkboards
Wolf diagnosed “acute need for action”. This also applies to the cooperation between the 16 federal states, which are responsible for education in federal Germany. Education policy is coordinated jointly in the Standing Conference of Ministers of Education. At the same time, the federal states are pursuing selfish goals when it comes to recruiting the best teachers.” If you look at Bavaria, then Prime Minister Markus Söder's strategy is to try to get as many teachers as possible next year other federal states,” says Wolf. The federal states were therefore more likely to compete with each other.
But how can the teaching profession be made more attractive? For example, by reducing the sprawling, daunting bureaucracy: “If you ask teachers what they want most, then it's not more salary, but more time for their core tasks,” says pedagogue Heinz-Peter Meidinger. Colleagues would be burdened with more and more additional tasks. Statistics would have to be kept, book money collected, class trips organized and additional projects taken on. “Of course, digitization also requires a great deal of training and support, which is often lacking.”
Trade union with a 15-point plan
The Standing Scientific Commission of the Conference of Ministers of Education (SWK) proposes, among other things, to keep retirees employed. They also recommend limiting part-time work. “49 percent of teachers work part-time, this is where the greatest potential for developing resources lies,” says a press release from the Commission.
The trade union for education and science, GEW, turned to politics with a “15-point plan against the shortage of teachers”. With the recruitment of administrative staff and IT specialists, “teachers should be relieved of non-specialist tasks”. Some other suggestions: higher salaries, qualifications for career changers, better school equipment, more study places and abolition of study restrictions.
Corona as a driver of digitization in schools: During the pandemic, a teacher teaches via the Internet
The GEW also welcomes “tutoring” from abroad: Qualifications from other countries should be recognized more easily. According to the latest figures from the Conference of Ministers of Education, most teachers with foreign nationality have come from Europe, as expected. At the top is France (939), followed by Poland (810) and Italy (738).
Foreign teachers face bureaucratic hurdles
“The problem is not that too few people apply, but that foreign teachers hardly have a chance in Germany due to the very difficult recognition process,” says Dagmar Wolf from the Robert Bosch Foundation. The teaching activity requires a formalized professional recognition of the respective foreign qualification.
“In federalism, we have the problem that there is no uniform regulation, but that the federal states regulate it very individually.” Accordingly, there is a great deal of interest from people who have obtained a degree abroad, “but in the end very, very few end up in the system because of the bureaucratic hurdles”.
In view of the shortage of teachers, Wolf is focusing on exports – and knowledge nation Germany, whose most important raw material is the education of its citizens, a miserable report: Germany is not only in danger of being transferred, “it has already failed,” she judges. “However, many a sitter later made a career.”