The shortage of teachers is one of the most pressing issues in education policy. Experts from a commission based at the Conference of Ministers of Education (KMK) will present proposals this Friday on how the shortage of staff can be resolved. This involves 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.
Shortage of teachers “to a large extent also homemade”
From the point of view of the German Teachers’ Association, failures in education policy have led to a shortage of teachers over the past ten to fifteen years. So it was “homemade to a large extent,” said teacher association president Heinz-Peter Meidinger of the “Rheinische Post” (Friday). “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 disappear in recent decades.”
In the current situation, only “emergency measures” could help, said Meidinger. Lateral entrants would have to be recruited and subsequently qualified. In addition, there is a need for attractive employment offers for retired teachers and student teachers as teaching assistants, said Meidinger. However, the Conference of Ministers of Education and the Commission of Experts would have to work to ensure that the required standards are not lowered in the case of pedagogical and professional post-qualification.
