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Teacher in Hanover: 47 percent of the teachers and 19 percent of the teachers worked part-time
Photo: Julian Stratenschulte / picture alliance / dpa
Almost 40 percent of the 702,000 teachers in Germany’s schools worked part-time in the 2020/2021 school year.
The part-time quota was last similarly high in 2011, when it was 39 percent, as reported by the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden.
47 percent of female teachers and 19 percent of male teachers worked part-time.
In the German economy as a whole, the part-time rate among employees was 30 percent in 2021.
A teacher recently reported to SPIEGEL that she and her colleagues have been exhausted since the lockdowns, “the workload is unbearable”, many colleagues therefore only work part-time, “even the very young ones”.
The statistics for the school year that has just ended are not yet available.
37 percent of the teachers were at least 50 years old in the school year 2020/2021, only seven percent younger than 30.
Number of first-year students is falling
In recent years, more and more young people have decided to study to become a teacher. In the 2020/2021 winter semester, the number of students rose to its highest level in more than 25 years and hardly fell in the following year.
However, the number of new students in the first semester fell by 14 percent in the 2021/2022 academic year compared to the previous year.
Almost 750,000 children were enrolled in school in the 2020/2021 school year.
Within ten years, the number of pupils fell by five percent – partly due to demographic reasons – while at the same time the number of teachers rose by four percent.
The class sizes have also shrunk by one or two children on average in recent years, according to the statistics office.
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There is still a shortage of teachers - the government in Baden-Württemberg is therefore considering, for example, increasing the classes again.
According to KMK forecasts, there will be a shortage of around 24,000 teachers at general schools in 2035.
The Essen-based education researcher Klaus Klemm, who has been dealing with the topic for around four decades, considers this assessment to be "whitewashing": The ministers are far too optimistic about the number of university graduates.
In his calculations, Klemm came up with a gap of more than 80,000 teachers.
sun/AFP
