Germany experiences worst-ever teacher shortage

Germany's education sector is in the grips of one of its worst ever staff shortages, the president of the Association of German Teachers, Heinz-Peter Meidinger, warned on Monday.

Speaking to Passauer Neue Presse newspaper, Meidinger estimated there was a current shortage of 40,000 teachers for the upcoming school year. "We have not had a similarly dramatic teacher shortage in Germany in three decades," he said.

Amongst others, Meidinger criticized that state governments had reduced the number of available university places for teacher training without taking the growing demand for staff in the sector into account. "This is a scandal. In Berlin, 70 percent of newly-hired teachers in primary schools are lateral entrants without any previous pedagogical education whatsoever."

Similarly, the president of the German Union for Education and Science (GEW), Marlis Tepe, described the current situation in primary schools in particular as "dramatic" on Monday. Speaking to the broadcaster ARD, Tepe expressed concern the situation would deteriorate even further as the most qualified teachers become concentrated at already high-performing schools, while inexperienced staff serve poorer-funded institutions in socially deprived areas.

The situation is particularly dire in the German capital of Berlin. State education minister Sandra Scheeres recently told press that there was a shortage of 1,250 teachers in the city in June, the highest ever number recorded by local municipal authorities. In a sign of growing desperation, policy makers are now offering university students with academic specializations jobs which bear some tangential resemblance to the state curriculum half-year.

According to Tepe, however, many of these new recruits will not last in the job for long. She lamented that the unstable situation was causing harm to "an entire generation of pupils" in the worst-affected states, and that attempts by policy makers to improve educational statistics were largely ineffective in improving students' actual experiences.