Everywhere in Germany, there is a severe shortage of qualified teachers in schools. Everyone who has children or still goes to school can tell what this means for us. Constantly changing teachers, lessons that are cancelled, merging of school classes and last but not least, the students are required to learn all the topics that have not been worked on on their own, whereby the tasks of the education system are simply shifted onto parents and students.
The situation is no different in Bavaria. According to a survey conducted by the Bavarian Teachers' Association (BLLV), about ten percent of the required positions cannot currently be filled.
Accordingly, the shortage of teachers at Bavarian schools is a recurring topic in politics. In recent months, the head of the CSU, Markus Söder, has proposed a number of measures to counteract the shortage.
These were presented by him very optimistically in the public. According to Söder, a whole 6,000 new teaching positions are supposed to be created by 2028.
But whether this announcement will actually be implemented is extremely questionable, because the issue of the shortage of teachers in schools is a popular election campaign issue with which one can go to catch votes.
One of the measures that was presented is the poaching of skilled workers from other states. With a so-called "start and moving assistance" a financial incentive is to be created around teaching specialists, above all new graduates freshly from the university to lure from other states.
In plain language, this means that the shortage of teachers in Bavaria is to be compensated for by exacerbating the situation in other states. The educational success of children and pupils depends anyway already on the purse of the parents, accordingly the situation in a richer Land like Bavaria is to be improved at expense of the poorer states of the Federal Republic.
A further presented measure which is to improve allegedly the bad situation at the Bavarian schools is an obligatory Praxissemester for teacher training students.
But many teachers' associations criticize this proposal and warn of its consequences.
Actually, the idea is that practical semesters as part of the teacher training program should serve to give prospective teachers an insight into the profession and enable them to gain specialist practical experience in the field. There is a position paper of the BLLV in which it is explained how practical semesters at schools should look like. This includes regular orientation meetings, portfolios, parents' evenings, conferences, job shadowing and yes, also self-led lessons - but only under supervision and good guidance.
So the professionals already in place are supposed to take time to properly train and teach students. However, teachers' associations warn that this cannot and will not be implemented in the current situation anyway.
In reality, this mandatory practical semester will therefore certainly not look like it should. There are already too few teachers who can ensure the quality of these practical semesters. Student teachers are therefore now to be thrown straight from the lecture hall into the schools and there into the deep end. Instead of training the prospective teachers properly, they are simply to take over the tasks of teaching specialists without the appropriate training and knowledge.
The quality of teaching will decrease in any case. It is also questionable whether the students concerned will continue their studies after they have been burned in this way or whether they will want to drop out immediately.
It seems as if the grandly propagated proposals of Söder are nothing more than empty promises that are supposed to bring in votes for the election campaign, but in reality change nothing about the acute shortage of teachers that prevails in Bavaria or at most shift it to other places.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
