In Bavaria’s day-care centers, there is a lack of staff and there are too few childcare places – Social Minister Ulrike Scharf (CSU) presented suggestions on how to solve the problems quickly on Tuesday. Everywhere at the beginning of the day-care year there is a lack of teachers, day-care centers shorten opening hours or groups have to close. But the response to Scharf’s ideas is very negative. Parents and the opposition in the state parliament particularly criticize the focus on the quantity of places at the expense of the quality of education.
In a ministerial letter to municipalities and daycare providers, the Ministry of Social Affairs had suggested exploiting the experimentation clause in the Child Education and Care Act. With larger groups in large day care and mini-daycare centers as well as new groups attached to daycare centers, places should be created quickly. In new “entry-level groups”, for example, “the grandmother or someone who likes the job can also look after them,” said Scharf. The professional requirement is given because the group is located at a day care center. This pilot project is limited to August 2024 and is intended to give municipalities and providers the freedom to find skilled workers.
The Minister of Social Affairs was unable to say how many teachers and childcare workers are missing. The need is just being reassessed. A forecast by the Bertelsmann Foundation assumes that 45,600 additional skilled workers will be required by 2030.
“Madness” and “really mad” are reactions to Scharf’s plans
As early as Monday, representatives of the church daycare providers, aware of the letter, had doubts as to whether the experiments would solve the basic problem of the shortage of skilled workers. Instead of pointing out “that the law should be exhausted, money and brainpower have to be put into the system,” criticized Daniel Gromotka, spokesman for the network of joint parents’ councils in Bavaria, on Tuesday. Scharf did not provide any real solutions and the parents were not even asked, said the Munich parent spokesman. From his point of view, more administrative staff would have to relieve daycare management and the salaries of educators and childcare workers would have to increase significantly. And the quality? “That scares me, in the end everything will depend on the quality,” said Gromotka. It is bad that many parents are dependent on the day care center, they have no other choice.
The Bavarian workers’ welfare organization also called for a specialist offensive: Nicole Schley and Stefan Wolfshörndl said that in order to implement the legal entitlement to all-day care for primary school children from 2026, more training and further education places as well as free further qualifications are needed.
Doris Rauscher, chairwoman of the state parliament’s social affairs committee and social policy spokeswoman for the SPD, called Scharf’s ideas “madness”. The day-care centers’ educational aspirations are “driven against the wall with our eyes wide open. We know how important and valuable the first few years are for development”. The fact that Scharf sells the “lowering of the quality level” as an innovative concept makes her “really angry”. Especially since the government rejected all of the opposition’s ideas.
Julika Sandt (FDP) also criticized this and attested to “complete lack of planning”. In the worst case, the government is now even scaring away specialists, said Johannes Becher (Greens). For him, the solutions would be more management time, faster recognition of foreign specialists, further training and opportunities for advancement. “But nothing has happened here for years. And now the hut is on fire.”