The shortage of teachers in Germany is much more serious than the Conference of Ministers of Education (KMK) assumes: the teachers’ union Association for Education and Education (VBE) came to this alarming conclusion based on a survey of 1308 school administrations nationwide. In the representative survey that Forsa carried out on behalf of the VBE, it was determined in September and October 2022 how many teaching positions were vacant at the beginning of the 2022/2023 school year.
57 percent of the school managements surveyed stated that at least one of the available positions was vacant at the time in question. In turn, a quarter of the schools affected stated that six to ten percent of the positions were vacant – a fifth of the headmasters even mentioned a vacancy of more than 15 percent.
The shortage of teachers in elementary schools as well as in special schools was particularly drastic. A large majority of 84 percent of the headmasters surveyed assume that their school will be “strongly” or “very badly” affected in the future.
According to the VBE, eleven percent of the available positions are vacant nationwide, which means that 1.6 positions are vacant per school. Measured against the total number of schools providing general education, which the Federal Statistical Office put at 32,206 for the past school year, this results in more than 51,000 vacant teaching positions nationwide. A survey by the editorial network Germany among the ministries of education of the federal states in January revealed the number of currently around 12,000 vacancies.
According to KMK calculations, the gap between the demand for and supply of teachers between 2021 and 2035 averages around 1,600 each year.
“In the reality of our schools, the gap is estimated to be twice as large as the KMK predicts for 2035,” states VBE chairman Gerhard Brand. His demand: “The nice calculation must come to an end.” The KMK must “urgently develop serious, binding and methodically coordinated standards for the preparation of future demand and supply forecasts by the countries. They are the necessary basis for a reliable overall forecast at the federal level.”
The researchers also asked the headmasters whether lateral entrants were employed at their schools – i.e. people without formal teaching qualifications. 60 percent of respondents indicated that this was the case; an increase of 23 percentage points compared to 2018.
According to the survey, lateral entrants are particularly often employed at secondary schools, junior high schools and comprehensive schools, as well as at special needs schools. Of the school principals who use lateral entrants, 51 percent stated that this group of employees was on a fixed-term contract.
VBE boss Brand warns: “What was once sold to us as an emergency solution has long been an integral part of reality in schools. We see with great concern that this occurs to a much greater extent, particularly in those types of schools whose pupils bring with them increased educational needs.”
His association therefore demands that career changers undergo at least six months of pre-qualification before taking up the teaching profession in order to be able to acquire “basic pedagogical and didactic knowledge”. Later entrants who are already in service would also have to be “fully qualified further up to the point of full teaching qualification”.
For the survey, which is representative of schools with general education, Forsa questioned 1,308 school administrators from September 7th to October 20th in the context of computer-assisted telephone interviews and purely online surveys. The error tolerance is three percentage points.
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