Disappointment among pregnant teachers in Bavaria – Bavaria

“I wanted to work normally, without Zinnober,” says Maria Reiter. You can see her disappointment. Reiter is one of those pregnant teachers in Bavaria who was dying to go back to school. She was so annoyed by the corona-related ban on entry that she even kept her pregnancy a secret before the summer holidays so that she could continue to accompany her students. The high school teacher normally teaches sports and the Catholic religion at the College of School Brothers in Illertissen.

She has had to sit at home since the beginning of September. Although she feels good, she really wanted to go back to school and her headmaster supported her, Reiter has not returned to high school to this day. The new rules are too complicated. Maria Reiter says that “stones have been put in her way”. The organizational hurdles for her school would have been too high, it would not have been “profitable”.

Although the blanket general decree no longer applies since October 4th, pregnant teachers have been allowed to teach at school again in principle. But after a good four weeks, a look at the numbers and a grassroots survey shows that only a few of the 2,800 pregnant teachers are back to work at the school. That sounds more positive in the Ministry of Education: Reports from the schools indicated that “more and more pregnant women are returning to the schools”. Before the autumn break, the rate of “teachers absent due to pregnancy” was 1.18 percent, five weeks earlier it was 1.30 percent of all 160,000 teachers. That’s not the big hit.

Minister of Education Michael Piazolo (free voters) had already made advances: When he announced the end of the general decree, he already said that the end of the ban on entry should not bring too much relief for the shortage of teachers. But every teacher is needed, especially elementary and middle schools with the highest proportion of women and thus a high proportion of pregnant women are acutely affected. Nevertheless, the new rules seem to have undercut the expectations of the schools. Even more bureaucracy for practically no profit, one hears from several corners of Bavaria. And in elementary schools, the rules are almost impossible to implement.

To protect against corona infections, pregnant women should always wear FFP2 masks in class and in meeting areas such as corridors and keep a distance of 1.5 meters from their students. Mask-wearing breaks must be planned because pregnant women are particularly prone to shortness of breath, and retreat rooms are available, which is difficult in small schools. Actually, the women should only teach half classes, i.e. give remedial lessons or take over smaller upper-level courses. Whole classes are only provided in large rooms where distance can be maintained. The other halves of the class would then have to be supervised by so-called team teachers. But these would have had to be cast first, says teacher Maria Reiter, “and as soon as there was a positive case in a class, I would have been out for eight days”. This made their use completely unpredictable given the number of infections. So she stays at home.

It was to be expected that maternity and occupational safety and school reality could collide. The data on the infectivity and course of the new corona variants is very sparse, the only thing that is certain is that pregnant women have a higher risk of severe courses. The protection of pregnant women and the unborn baby is more important than the shortage of teachers. In addition, the risk assessments have been professionalized with the new rules and responsibility has been transferred to a certain extent to the headmasters through the second, event-related assessment. Many would rather let the women continue to work from home than take risks, confirms Michael Schwägerl, head of the Philologists’ Association.

The conditions are “very high, the paperwork endless,” agrees Andreas Fischer, chairman of the Bavarian School Management Association and head of the elementary school in Landau an der Isar. In any case, the desired effect of a return wave did not occur. He brought a pregnant colleague back to the school, says Fischer. “She works in the office from Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. And makes copies for colleagues or corrects them. Unfortunately, she’s not a real help in class.”

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