Ailing sports facilities and lack of personnel threaten school sports in Germany. From 2026/27, this should play a central role in the all -day offer, but many schools face insoluble challenges. Studies face serious cuts. This shows an analysis of the ARD radio research sport.
Tuesday morning in the Lessing primary school in Ingolstadt, physical education. However, the children do not run through the gym or play football, but do yoga in a classroom. The gym is dilapidated, explains the deputy headmaster Ingo Geppert of ARD Radio Research Sport: “The children simply lack movement in our working groups. Personally, I have to say: This is dramatic.”
Ail sports facilities and Skills shortage
The gym and the swimming pool have been closed since Christmas, the roof is at risk of collapse. A renovation is according to the city “Not economically sensible”. That is why the elementary school students do sports in the classroom. If the weather is good, you can go to the paved school playground to play football.
The city of Ingolstadt proposes a temporary solution to the school: to take the bus to another gym or into the swimming pool. There would be not much left of physical education.
Bus ride instead Swimming lessons
“With entry and exit, with the bus ride itself, with the dress and when someone has forgotten something or has to go to the toilet again and the whole thing is still shifting, I would probably be at 20 minutes for the little ones and, if it is going extraordinarily well, with the big one at almost half an hour of water time”Ingo Geppert calculates.
Statistics: Each third municipality must reduce sports offer
The school sports facilities in Germany are in an alarming state. Data from the German Institute for Urban Studies (DIFU) show on behalf of the Reconstruction Credit: Each third municipality will have to reduce its range of sports in the next few years. Almost 60 percent consider the investment deficit in sports facilities serious.
All -day care from 2026/27: one Challenge For sport
School sport is already not a matter of course for many children; And for parents and teachers, the question arises: How should this work from the school year 2026/27? From then on, all elementary school students in Germany are entitled to care from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Also on vacation.
Sport should play a central role in the full day, with more offers in the afternoon. Teachers like Jana König, sports teacher at the Cameloher primary school in Ismaning hope for this: “Because the children spend more time at school and can also be offered more workshops and working groups, it would be optimal if this AG also relates to the sports area, but that is the big problem that many schools cannot guarantee this is because we unfortunately have the great lack of staff.”
Around 100,000 Sports specialists will be missing in Germany
The lack of personnel is reinforced by the full day. Experts assume 100,000 specialists in Germany that will be missing. In Bavaria, for example, Minister of Culture Anna Stolz (Free Voters) says: “You have to say very clearly that we have a shortage of teachers in Bavaria and all over Germany.”
In Thuringia, around 2,500 sports lessons fail every week
Because there are already too few specialists, sport is canceled. There are only specific figures on how much physical education is, there are only from North Rhine-Westphalia and Thuringia. In the past school year, an average of 2,500 sports lessons in Thuringia failed in a week, which results in a survey by the Ministry of Education. The main reasons: missing personnel and illness of sports teachers.
Almost nobody knows how much sport is
Schleswig-Holstein, Bremen and Hamburg did not answer the request from ARD Radio Research Sport. The remaining federal states do not collect the data. On request, for example, the Bavarian Ministry of Culture writes: “As part of the elevation for the loss of lessons, there is no differentiation according to the subject. Therefore, we have no data on the lesson loss in sports.”
Representatives from practice like sports scientist Susanne Tittlbach criticize this: “Of course, this is really a quality Manko if we don’t know that from schools and the ministries, because such a monitoring alone would be important to know: What is the status?”
Cooperation with clubs: a way out of the crisis?
The Cameloher primary school in Ismaning near Munich shows that schools cannot already offer as much sport as they want today. She would like to offer more sports AG for the children in the afternoon, but she finds no staff, explains sports teacher Jana König: “Unfortunately, we do not have enough of the trainers who can support us here. We as teachers are not, for example, my hours are full, I can no longer offer a workshop in the afternoon, because the basic lessons are more important at the moment.”
Core problem: know-how and money are missing
Once a week, the local football club comes with a trainer. You will not find more cooperation partners. Cooperation with the clubs should be a central building block for sports lessons in all day, emphasizes Minister of Culture proudly: “There is open all day, the bound full day, there is lunch care and we will include a wide variety of carriers and clubs.”
But: If only about ten percent of sports clubs in Bavaria are cooperating with schools, a study by the University of Würzburg shows. The study also shows that many clubs do not know how the collaborations work – and do not have the funds.
BLSV warns: volunteering alone is not enough
Personnel and money are also missing here, says Michael Weiß, the chairman of the Bavarian Sports Youth in the BLSV: “Payment is a crucial criterion. It is a professional mainstay that is not affordable on a voluntary basis, and I think we see this in many places – our clubs are mostly volunteer. But at certain times of the day and for certain tasks alone, volunteering alone is not sufficient.”
“Of course, we also provided funds in the household for the full day, we will of course increase the funds further if the offer grows up. We have already made clear improvements in financing all -day offers including lunch care in the last budget”emphasizes Minister of Culture proudly.
Who takes care of the training of the trainers?
The clubs are still too vague. Also unclear: the training of the trainers. It is very important so that the children enjoy sport, explains sports scientist Susanne Tittlbach: “Unfortunately, this happens very, very often that people say: ‘Thank God the physical education is over, then I no longer have to do sports because I found it so terrible.'”
Children qualified for sport so that passion grows and remains until the end of life – that is the claim: but reality often looks different, says Jana König.
“For example, when building gymnastics, building a bar: How do you build a bar, how are the security and helper handles and if you don’t dare to do it, you don’t do it. It is then lost again on the children, they cannot take these experiences with them.” Because in the end they are already the victims, the students.
Sports funding in Germany – the ARD research
“Transferring? School sport before collapse” is the start of a four -part series of ARD Radio Research Sport on sports funding in Germany. The other parts are published every week. “Club sports for children – no money, no halls, no coaches”, “Young talent performance – the elite schools of sport are not enough” and “Top athletes – because of professionals, athletes in Olympic sports even have to be ‘pay’.
