North Rhine-Westphalia: The state government is moving almost 3,300 teachers to primary schools

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The shortage of staff is particularly great in elementary schools

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Arne Dedert/ DPA

Fight shortage with shortage: Due to the dramatic shortage of teachers, those responsible sometimes resort to drastic measures.

According to the North Rhine-Westphalia Ministry of Education, around 4,400 teaching positions are currently vacant.

At primary schools, the shortage of staff is currently particularly great.

The state government is therefore now moving teachers from secondary schools to primary schools for a limited period of time - for example for one school year - in order to fill gaps in the thin staffing levels there.

Almost 3,300 teachers are currently affected, most of them in the Düsseldorf district.

This is reported by the »Rheinische Post«.

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As a first step, the district governments are looking for volunteers who can be transferred to another school for a limited period of time.

If there are not enough interested parties, the secondments are also made against the will of the teachers.

How many of the nearly 3,300 shifts were voluntary is not known.

Eliminate deficiency, create deficiency

The teachers would have to "suffer for the exclusively politically caused shortage of teachers," criticizes Dilek Engin, spokeswoman for school policy for the SPD parliamentary group in the Düsseldorf state parliament.

»It shouldn't have been like that.« Schools would have wasted valuable time by doing nothing on the part of the state government.

“Now only drastic measures like seconding teachers can help in the short term.

In the end, that harms everyone involved.« Even in the third year of the pandemic, there will be »no quiet everyday school life.«

Ayla Çelik, state chairwoman of the GEW North Rhine-Westphalia, considers secondments of teachers to schools with a particularly large shortage of staff to be the wrong way - especially if they take place against the will of those affected.

"It cannot be the solution to remedy the shortage in one school by creating shortages in another school," Çelik told WAZ.

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