result of the school barometer
Teacher shortage is the biggest problem in schools
01/18/2023 10:31 am
Many schools in Germany are sounding the alarm, they lack teachers. Institutions in socially difficult situations in particular are struggling. A quick solution to the problem is not in sight, the training takes a long time – and according to the training union, it should not be shortened.
From the point of view of the school management, the biggest problem in Germany’s schools is the lack of teaching staff. This is the result of a representative Forsa survey commissioned by the Robert Bosch Foundation. According to the German school barometer, for which, for the first time since 2019, only school administrators were surveyed instead of teachers, two thirds (67 percent) consider the lack of staff to be the biggest challenge at their school. With 80 percent, he is therefore mentioned particularly often in schools in socially difficult situations.
Far behind the lack of staff, those surveyed cited the slow pace of digitization and poor technical equipment (22 percent) as problems, followed by too much bureaucracy (21 percent) and their own high workload (20 percent).
Less bureaucracy could alleviate problems
“There is no quick and, above all, no easy solution to the shortage of teachers,” said Dagmar Wolf from the Robert Bosch Foundation. She explained that less bureaucracy could at least alleviate the current shortage of staff in schools. For example, hiring support staff in administration, educational assistants or foreign teachers could make things easier.
The GEW education union and the Education and Training Association (VBE) are also sounding the alarm. “The blatant shortage of teachers and skilled workers is the Achilles’ heel of the school system. It not only slows down almost every school policy reform project, but is now endangering the educational efforts in Germany as a whole,” said GEW board member Anja Bensinger-Stolze. The federal states simply failed to plan and coordinate the generational change in schools.
Union: Studies should not be shortened
“For us at school, a shortage of teachers is not just a number, it is a real threat to the pedagogical quality of what we offer,” said VBE national chairman Gerhard Brand. “Especially if people think even more about shortening the teaching degree and the teaching qualification is already achieved with the bachelor’s degree.” This is a mistake, he warned.
A teacher training course usually lasts four to five years, followed by the traineeship. In 2021, the number of teacher graduates had fallen by 13.8 percent in a ten-year comparison. 28,900 women and men took their final examination for a teaching degree.
The federal states are trying to counter the shortage of teachers with various measures. For example, Berlin has opened up the profession to career changers. University graduates can catch up on missing qualifications, but are already employed in schools. However, the administrative court recently found that there is no sufficient legal basis for the activities of several thousand career changers.