From BZ/dpa
Teachers and parents are uneasy. The demand is that the search for solutions to the shortage of teachers should become a top priority.
In view of the shortage of teachers, the Education and Science Union (GEW) has called on Brandenburg Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke (SPD) to get involved in the search for solutions. “The situation is disastrous,” said union boss Günther Fuchs on Tuesday in Potsdam about the situation in the schools. He called on the state government to negotiate quickly, which Prime Minister Woidke should coordinate. The right to education is in danger, the teachers are at the limit, said Fuchs.
Parents’ councils had previously called for a round table in an open letter to Woidke due to the lack of teachers and the slow pace of digitization in their eyes. According to the GEW’s proposals, the state government should work to reduce the workload on teachers, to improve further training, including for lateral entrants, and to provide needs-based training. “There won’t be a simple solution,” said Fuchs. Next Wednesday there will be talks between the teachers’ associations in the Ministry of Education, said a spokeswoman for the ministry.
Education Minister Britta Ernst (SPD) wants to tackle reforms for better school teaching and further training for teachers. There should be additional study places for the teaching profession. Elementary school teachers will be trained in Senftenberg in Lusatia in the future. This will create a second training location alongside the University of Potsdam.
Brandenburg’s Education Minister Britta Ernst (SPD) Photo: picture alliance/dpa
According to Fuchs, in the next ten years around 12,500 teachers will retire from active school service for reasons of age, that is 60 percent of the teachers. Around 24,000 employees would work in Brandenburg for 22,000 teaching positions, of which 6,500 were lateral entrants.
According to the Ministry, around 30 percent of new hires are lateral entrants. These are teachers without a pedagogy degree who are going through an additional qualification. In the search for more teachers, Brandenburg also wants to lower the hurdles for the civil servants of lateral entrants.