12,000 positions currently unfilled
Association criticizes “homemade” shortage of teachers
01/27/2023, 06:50 am
The forecasts are bleak: According to calculations by the Conference of Ministers of Education, between 2021 and 2035 an average of 1,600 teachers will be missing each year. There is already a shortage in many schools. The teachers’ association complained: The omissions of the past few years are taking revenge.
According to the German Teachers’ Association, the education system is currently facing the “biggest shortage of teachers in 50 years”. This is a major threat to the future prospects of young people, said association president Heinz-Peter Meidinger of the “Rheinische Post”. The shortage of teachers is largely “homemade”. There have been many failures in education policy over the past 10 to 15 years.
“On the one hand, the increase in births that has been observed in Germany since 2012 has been ignored for far too long, and on the other hand, thousands upon thousands of places for teaching degrees have been allowed to be cut in recent decades,” said Meidinger. He spoke in advance of the presentation of recommendations by the Standing Scientific Commission of the Conference of Ministers of Education (KMK) on how to deal with the acute shortage of teachers this Friday in Berlin. The experts are expected to propose measures that can be implemented in the short and medium term.
Currently and in the foreseeable future, there are not enough trained teachers to keep up, as would be needed in view of the development in student numbers and retirements. Calculations by the KMK had shown that between 2021 and 2035 an average of around 1,600 teachers would be missing each year. More pessimistic forecasts assume a significantly larger number. According to the state ministries of education, more than 12,000 teaching positions are currently vacant, as a survey by the editorial network Germany (RND) in the 16 federal states showed.
“At the moment, only emergency measures such as recruiting and requalifying career changers, attractive job offers for retired teachers and recruiting student teachers as teaching assistants are helping,” said the President of the Teachers’ Association. In the case of post-qualification, however, the requirement standards should not be lowered.