Teacher shortage has been a problem in Western Europe for years, but the situation has worsened significantly in the last year or two. The number of teachers could drop drastically in the coming years, which a big problem because fewer highly skilled young people can enter the already ailing labour market.

By 2027, almost ten thousand teachers will retire from the Berlin school system due to their age, State Secretary for Finance Jana Borkamp announced in the Science Committee of the Berlin House of Representatives. There were 33,988 teachers in Berlin schools in the 2021/2022 school year (1 November), the Senate Education Directorate says, which is a very low number.

Therefore, the Senate wants to oblige Berlin universities to train 2,300 graduate teachers a year. Under current university contracts with the state, 2,000 student teachers are supposed to graduate each year, but in recent years only around 900 have actually graduated from university.

New university contracts are being negotiated now. The Senate wants to determine how much money universities should receive to train a sufficient number of students. On 1 November 2022, there were almost 1,000 teacher vacancies in Berlin schools, while the education administration last May forecast 920 teacher vacancies for this school year. In November, December and January, even more teachers were absent because many were on sick leave.

However, teacher shortage prevails not only in and around the capital, but also in the whole country. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, schools are suffering from the inability to replace absences. Some schools have merged classes, while others have cancelled some less important lessons. The provincial branch of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) therefore believes that approaches to sustainable teacher recruitment would include the establishment of a teacher training college in the province and a reduction in the bureaucratic burden on teachers, which has been triggered in particular by the questionable inclusivity campaign. The gender lobby has put a lot of paperwork and other administrative tasks on teachers’ shoulders, who sometimes have to do the work of three or four people because of the shortage.

„The already serious underachievement of our students could only be compensated for by well-trained teachers who can concentrate fully on teaching. Our teachers are not so much complaining about the teaching load caused by their teaching hours; rather, and especially, they are stretched to the limit by non-teaching demands,”

said Enrico Schult, a school policy expert in the AfD parliamentary group in the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Landtag. The AfD therefore calls for the creation of a teacher training university where student teachers can be prepared for their future work in a targeted and practical way, without unnecessary overload. „Given the glaring shortage of teachers, we simply cannot afford a high drop-out rate,” Mr Schult added.

The University of Potsdam has launched a „targeted training” pilot project, by offering teacher training exclusively to immigrants. Of the initial 160 applicants, 105 successfully completed the teacher training course, which corresponds to a drop-out rate of around 37 per cent. By comparison, the German Centre for Higher Education Research and Research estimates that the drop-out rate among German student teachers is around 20 per cent.

Of the 160 or so participants in the training programme, only 21 refugees are currently working as teachers in Brandenburg. Against this backdrop, we can say that the initiative was less than successful.

Local AfD has also voiced its criticism of the project. Those who, like Brandenburg’s Social Democratic Education Minister Britta Ernst, believe that this project will help to tackle the teacher shortage must be delusional, they stated. So far, more than 2.7 million euros have been spent on this project, but no tangible impact has been achieved since 2016.

If Germany’s teacher shortage woes continue to worsen, the already struggling labour market could find itself in an even more dramatic situation in a few years’ time. The lack of public education can also have a negative impact on university students, resulting in far fewer highly qualified young people entering the labour market.