School in Baden-Württemberg (symbol image): shortage of teachers at primary schools by 2025 – and then an oversupply?
Photo:
Sebastian Gollnow / DPA
The position is advertised, the money for the salary is provided – only the right applicant is missing.
This scenario is already a reality in many schools in Germany, and it will not change in the near future.
In the primary schools alone, an average of 1,460 teachers will be missing in the next three years, every year.
This emerges from a new report by the Conference of Ministers of Education (KMK) on the need for teachers, which was presented this Monday.
At least in the short term, the forecast gives little prospect of the shortage of staff in the schools decreasing.
The demand continues to exceed the supply, as a model calculation by the KMK shows.
In the long term, on the other hand, there could even be an oversupply at least in some types of schools.
For example, the ministers assume that by 2026 there could be more primary school teachers than are needed.
In the year 2035, this »oversupply« could, purely mathematically, amount to 2930 teachers.
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The federal states are aware of the "challenging situation", said Karin Prien, KMK President and Minister of Education in Schleswig-Holstein on the occasion of the results.
According to Prien, the quintessence of the results is to make the »important profession of teaching even more attractive«.
However, this applies more to some school types and less to others.
For example, there are far too few special education teachers.
By 2026, it is assumed that there will be an average of 890 teachers with the special training missing each year.
From 2027, however, the KMK expects a "constant oversupply" in this area.
According to the model calculation, however, there is a "continuous bottleneck" in the case of teaching posts for all or individual school types in secondary level I, i.e. for classes 5 to 10 at non-Gymnasium schools.
Here the "annual funding gap" in 2021 was 3800 teachers.
A shortage is to be expected here until 2035.
However, the gap is shrinking.
Then »only« 420 trained teachers are missing.
Oversupply of more than 1000 teachers at high schools
The ministers of culture continue to assume that there will be a shortage of teachers in the upper secondary level (vocational subjects) and vocational schools, especially in the eastern German states.
An average of 1,650 educators will be missing here every year, "if no suitable control measures have a positive influence on development," according to the KMK.
In the high school, however, the situation is very different.
On average, depending on the region, there are already too few teachers rather than too many.
According to the model calculation, an oversupply of an average of 1110 teachers a year is to be expected in the secondary levels I and II throughout Germany in the next few years.
Just a few weeks ago, the educational researcher Klaus Klemm questioned earlier KMK forecasts on the need for teachers.
He therefore considers the assumptions made by the Ministers of Education on the development of student numbers and the teacher requirements derived from them to be reliable.
In his opinion, however, they overestimated, among other things, the number of future teaching graduates.
While the KMK assumes that there will be a shortage of around 14,000 teachers in 2030, the educational researcher sees a significantly higher negative balance: 81,000.
Staff that is additionally required in the course of school policy reforms, such as reducing the size of classes, has not even been included in this list, said Klemm.
In the so-called MINT subjects (mathematics, computer science, natural sciences and technology), the shortage of staff will take on a “dramatic proportion”.
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