The lack of teachers will put a strain on schools over the next ten years. This is shown by new model calculations of the Conference of the Ministers of Culture (KMK). Accordingly, the ministers of education expect drastic gaps depending on the state and type of school - on the one hand, and an oversupply of teachers on the other.
A corresponding prognosis with the title "teacher attitude requirement and offer in the Federal Republic of Germany 2019 - 2030" decided the KMK on Thursday in Berlin. The paper is available to the German Press Agency. It lists the size of teachers' demand per year, state and type of school, and how many available teachers will be graduated.
The most important findings:
- Bottlenecks at primary, vocational and vocational schools: By the year 2030, the German ministers of education are constantly expecting bottlenecks at vocational schools and secondary schools (main and secondary schools).
- Oversupply of high school teachers: At the same time, the countries also consistently assume that there will be more high school teachers than are needed, and indeed throughout Germany.
- Short-term gap in elementary schools: At elementary schools, the situation is more differentiated. Up to and including the year 2023, the ministers of education are forecasting a very large gap of around 12,400 missing teachers, they speak of a very tense situation.
- Trend reversal in five years: From 2024, however, the trend of the KMK forecast is reversed. Then mathematically a teacher surplus is expected at primary schools, from 2027 even a significant oversupply.
Fight for the right numbers
In general, countries expect the average recruitment needs in almost all school sectors to increase in comparison to last year's forecasts. The main reasons they cite increasing numbers of students, because more children are born in Germany and due to immigration.
Above all, the situation at the elementary schools was the subject of heated debate. The Bertelsmann Foundation had published a study in September, according to which the KMK was quite wrong with their previous forecast on teacher needs and had assumed wrong figures. The lack of teachers was much more serious than accepted by the KMK, warned the study authors. The KMK admitted to having worked with outdated data.
According to the Bertelsmann study, at least 26,300 teachers are missing at Germany's elementary schools by 2025. Heinz-Peter Meidinger, President of the German Teachers Association, for example, takes a critical look at this forecast: "Because it adds up the demand gaps from year to year and does not take into account that countries fill most of the needs gaps with newcomers, but they get a permanent job ".
Who can fill in the gaps?
In the elementary school sector, countries expect significantly higher numbers of graduates in teaching from the mid-2020s. Every year, they expect around 8,000 young people a year to complete their primary school teacher training - around 2,000 more than today.
Job opportunities for prospective teachers remain good, according to the KMK forecast. With the exception of the Gymnasium area, there would be "good employment opportunities in the school system" throughout Germany by 2030.
The new model calculations of the countries to the expected gap between teacher needs and supply, however, give no information about the actual shortage of teachers at the schools, as the KMK emphasizes in her paper. Justification: Each year, countries counteract staff shortages with measures such as the reactivation of retired teachers or the employment of lateral entrants.
Currently there are in Germany, according to the information, nearly 800,000 full-time teachers.