Back in the classroom – or there for the first time: A new school year begins this Tuesday for around 1.7 million children and young people in Bavaria. Among them are a good 132,700 first-graders.
The eleventh grade at high schools is also new in a certain way. With the change from eight-year to nine-year high school, the first G-9 year enters the so-called introductory phase of the upper level. For him, computer science becomes a compulsory subject. There should also be more political education and more career guidance. The first G-9 Abitur is scheduled for 2026.
For schools, the start of the 2023/24 school year primarily means the challenge of teaching more students despite a lack of staff. Compared to the last school year, the overall increase in students is 1.9 percent. The number of first graders alone has increased by three percent. The Ministry of Culture still considers the provision of teaching to be secure.
Not everyone in the school family is equally optimistic. The Bavarian Teachers’ Association, for example, warns that lessons could be canceled again in some places – and the Bavarian Association of Philologists fears that things could get tight if “the first cancellations occur in the next few weeks”.
The state parliament opposition also criticizes. The FDP parliamentary group assumes that there could be a shortage of up to 1,000 teachers in high schools in the G-9 year 2025. She therefore suggests in a position paper that personnel recruitment should be made more flexible. For example, student teachers should be able to freely choose their subject combinations and receive a “plannable traineeship”.
One topic again this time will be the integration of refugees into lessons. In the last school year, this affected a good 30,000 Ukrainian children and young people. The Ministry of Culture is assuming a similar magnitude for the new school year. The bridge classes in which children and young people primarily learn German have also proven to be successful. About a third of them now move to regular classes at secondary schools.