The canton of Zurich is introducing training for teachers without a diploma and is hoping for 200 new teachers. But is that enough to tackle the teacher shortage?
An undocumented teacher on her first day of classes in Miles. Due to the shortage of teachers, the canton of Zurich also resorted to people without training in the summer.
If everything had gone according to plan, Ronny Siev would not be standing in front of a primary class and teaching today. “I do my best and it works,” he says, “but of course I’m not as good as a fully qualified teacher.”
If everything had gone according to plan, the canton of Zurich would not have to rely on people like Ronny Siev: teachers without a degree, of whom 530 were hired at the beginning of the school year. Siev is a former banker, GLP local councilor – and now a teacher in the Zurich school district of Waidberg. “I’m basically still in the apprenticeship, in the internship,” he says. “I really enjoy my work, but it’s also a lot.”
Ronny Siev, teacher without a diploma and GLP local councillor.
If everything had gone according to plan, Ronny Siev would have received real training before he even got into the classroom, rather than a quick bleacher. One that would have prepared him for the preparation of his eleven weekly lessons, the meetings with parents and students with behavioral problems. “Of course I would have benefited from it,” he says. “Now we absolutely need a good offer for how we can catch up on the training – and on a part-time basis.”
And even if a lot of things haven’t gone according to plan in Zurich’s school system lately – at least this last wish of Ronny Siev will now come true. Even if he himself probably has little of it.
Lateral entry study light
Teachers without a diploma should be able to easily catch up on the teaching profession. The canton of Zurich announced this on Thursday. The director of education, Silvia Steiner (centre), said proudly: “We want to win these people over to our schools in the long term.”
The training should be possible on a part-time basis and last about four years. In comparison to students in existing courses, however, no course content is waived for teachers without a diploma. Only the obligatory internship and the health test upon entry are to be omitted.
The hurdles for admission to simplified training are also high: Applicants must be at least 40 percent employed at a school this year, have been employed for at least three years and be older than 30. They must also have a high school diploma, a technical college certificate or a three-year apprenticeship. And even then, admission is not guaranteed: The last hurdle is an individual test of motivation and general education, although there are exceptions here as well.
Why so complicated? “We want to ensure the quality of future teachers,” said Silvia Steiner to the media. Her remarks made it clear: The new training program is anything but a simple back door for the teaching profession – at most it is a kind of light career changer course.
Nevertheless, those responsible hope that this will make a tangible contribution to combating the shortage of teachers. The program is intended to bring around 200 new teachers to the canton, who could each work around 40 percent of the time during their studies.
shortage will remain
It is the last in a whole series of measures intended to combat the shortage in Zurich classrooms. The shortened career changer course, relief from administrative work, higher wages for kindergarten teachers: all of this has been or is currently being implemented.
And yet all this is not enough.
Vacancies hit a record this summer and have been steadily increasing over the past three years. And next summer, experts expect the search for teachers to be difficult again, even if student growth is slowly flattening out. The director of education Steiner put it this way: “We will probably have to remain flexible for a few more years.”
The new training for teachers without a diploma will hardly change that. Another announcement by the canton seems more interesting: from 2024, all those interested will be able to study at the PH Zurich with an integrated job – i.e. one in which learning and teaching will take place right from the start. It was said that the situation of teachers without a degree accelerated the long overdue development of this course.
First teach, then learn to teach: So this approach has taken it from emergency solution to hope for the future.
“Everyone thinks they know better”
Not everyone is happy about this development. The Zurich Teachers’ Association announced that it welcomed the new training offer. However, it must not lead to qualified teachers being replaced by laypersons. “Schools should only be allowed to hire lay teachers if no trained teacher can be hired,” emphasizes the association. In addition, working conditions would have to be improved so that “a 100 percent workload becomes affordable again without burning out”.
The SP cantonal party demands the same. The current measures taken by the education department are not sufficient to remedy the shortage of teachers. The teachers without a diploma are just an “emergency measure”. SP government candidate Priska Seiler Graf was quoted as saying that higher wages and more paid preparation time are now needed. The accusation: the director of education, Silvia Steiner, exacerbated the problem with her hesitant action.
The addressee reacted calmly to this attack: Please don’t mix up the topics of a shortage of teachers and working conditions in schools. When asked whether she suspected tactical reasons behind the SP’s criticism, Steiner smiled meaningfully and said: “Everyone thinks they know better at the moment.”
“I make rookie mistakes”
However, the Director of Education insisted on presenting the commitment and the planned training of lay teachers as a success. “Motivated”, “flexible”, “fast”, “creative”, “open”: At the canton’s media conference, praise was not spared.
For the teachers without a diploma, on the other hand, it was often difficult to get started.
Ronny Siev says: «It really wasn’t a slap. Preparing each lesson, parent talks, meetings and, and, and: It’s a lot more work than you think.” The effort far exceeds his workload of 37 percent. And yet it is precisely this heavy workload that prevents him from starting his new training in the fall and finally entering the teaching profession.
His future in the classroom is as open as before the big announcement by the education department. But that doesn’t matter: in the here and now, Ronny Siev has enough to do. Even if he gets better every week and his students make good progress: “I’m still a beginner – and sometimes I make beginner’s mistakes.”