If the training workshop did not exist, perhaps the Free State would lack even more teachers. In any case, Alicia Schemm and Helena Huber are still there. The training workshop shaped them, they say: in the project, which in Bavaria only exists at the universities in Augsburg, Erlangen-Nuremberg, Passau and Würzburg, student teachers and teachers are teamed up in tandems. Put simply, the students then go to the university in the afternoons for a semester and to school in the mornings – in order to take part in everything that they will later have to do as teachers anyway. “Class trips, teacher conferences, school law, teaching,” lists Huber. “The training workshop was actually the reason why I continued my teacher training course,” says Schemm: “That really motivated me again.”
Start your career enthusiastically instead of frustrated by dropping out of training: the shortage of teachers has long been so great that Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) wants to poach staff from other federal states. Seen in this way, every young person who starts to study to become a teacher but never finishes it is particularly painful. At the behest of the Ministry of Education and Science, a commission of experts is even dealing with the question of how training can be made more attractive. The experts should develop future-oriented models “without prohibitions on thinking”, said Science Minister Markus Blume (CSU) at the first meeting.
Schemm and Huber have an idea – of which they are so convinced that they are trying to promote it alongside their studies. An association is behind the project, and the participating universities are responsible for implementation. The whole thing is voluntary for student teachers. Anyone who takes part spends at least 225 hours at a partner school: During the lecture period, this is usually one or two days a week, and more during the semester break. An additional effort, because unlike the internships provided for in the curriculum, the training workshop does not just last a few weeks. Under supervision, students are to receive additional and realistic insights into the teaching profession. And they should gain experience early on, self-confidence, motivation. “A degree is something different than a classroom,” says Huber. Schemm thinks: “First you have to find your way into the role of teacher.”
If you like, Huber and Schemm are pioneers with their project – and, whether intentionally or not, right in the middle of an old debate. It is not uncommon for the suggestions to be mixed up: whether it is about the introduction of bachelor’s and master’s degrees for teaching, a more cross-school training than before or more practical instead of theory modules. In view of the variety of positions, it could take a while for the new panel of experts to find a common one. And then there is the question mark of how much reform is even desirable. Because in the same communication in which Science Minister Blume promotes thinking without blinders, there are sentences that, on the contrary, mark guard rails: “For our differentiated school landscape, the basic structure of school-specific teacher training with studies and practical school training in the preparatory service has proven its worth,” Minister of Education Michael Piazolo (FW) is quoted as saying.
What complicates the discussion: the data situation. There is a lack of figures on who leaves the path to an apprenticeship and when and why. A study recently determined that nationwide almost half of the teaching students should give up. The clerkship still allows the best view for Bavaria. The preparatory service begins after the first state exam – which marks the transition from university to school – and usually ends two years later with the second exam and the end of the entire apprenticeship. In between, according to the official statistics, hundreds of heads are lost every year: For example, for the 2019 examination year, 4269 graduates for the first state examination are listed throughout Bavaria. At the second exam in 2021 there were 3872. A similar picture emerges when comparing other two-year periods, with a few hundred people always missing. The statistics do not say how many of them actually changed jobs. Teaching is also possible without a second exam, although often without a civil servant. The difference is striking nonetheless.
The Ministry of Culture emphasizes that in recent years the proportion of graduates in the second exam has been a good 94 percent, measured by the placements in the traineeship two years earlier. The estimate that half of the teacher training students drop out is considered too high. According to a spokesman, other studies pointed to “relatively lower dropout rates”. And: Dropouts could have many causes, such as starting a family, changing to an academic career or moving to another federal state.
But personal descriptions also suggest a clear decline. For example, a student teacher – who would like to remain anonymous so as not to ruin her career – tells us that they were eight friends at first. Only she and one other made it past the first state exam. “And I google for other jobs every day.” She has written a long list of what she believes should be different, the short version: more practice instead of “nonsensical” theory – and a fair state examination that does not cause additional frustration with opaque grading.
The topic of demolition should therefore come up in the expert panel, the frustration seems to be too great. Some in the school family can well imagine more practical training. But a practical semester, as proposed by the state government, has so far met with skepticism. One reproach: Students shouldn’t simply be sent to schools just to close staffing gaps there. “Anyone who is not optimally accompanied now and realizes how chaotic things are going, we lose them,” warned Simone Fleischmann, President of the Bavarian Teachers’ Association, in the SZ. The Ministry of Education, on the other hand, has only made diplomatic statements: The expert commission will include the practical semester “in different forms” in its considerations.
If Huber and Schemm had their way, their special form of the practical semester, which is closely monitored, would happily make a career. There have been 1,831 training workshop tandems since the start of the project in the 2012/13 school year, not counting those for the coming school year. A good 135,000 students are said to have benefited from two teachers in the classroom at the same time. In order to expand the project, however, financial support from politicians would be needed. Both of you would no longer benefit from funding, “but we want to break up the old structures,” says Huber. Everyone could benefit from this: students, schools, children, parents – “and also the Free State”.