“Dear Mr. Piazolo, we are all very sad. Can you please give us a teacher? Otherwise our class will be split up and we are all such great friends.” Lara Ninow writes in cursive and blue ink to Minister of Education Michael Piazolo. She is unhappy because next school year she and her friends are supposed to be divided into neighboring classes. The teachers who would have to teach them do not currently exist. Lara’s class is one class too many for the acute shortage of teachers.
The words of the elementary school student are attached to an open letter that the parents of the St. Lantbert school in Lerchenfeld sent to Piazolo. In it, they specifically call on the Minister of Education to assign another teacher to the children so that no class in the third grade has to be saved.
In their first two school years, class 2b was a partner class of Lebenshilfe and was taught in the Lebenshilfe training center on Gartenstrasse. To do this, the children had to regularly “take the bus across the city,” says the fire letter. The model was well received overall because the students benefited from teaching children with disabilities. In the middle of the school year, however, the children should come back to the main building of the school, where the extension building has now been completed. “For the children, this is an enormous change, since it means a change of school for them,” said the parents. Now the families have also had to learn that two thirds of the 20-strong class are not accommodated in the main building but in the decentralized pavilions, so the class is separated. “For the children, the thought of moving was bearable as they relied on staying together as a class – as they were continually promised.”
Due to the merger, there will be 28 children in one class in the future
The St. Lantbert primary school currently has five second classes. Because there is also an all-day and a cooperation class, the children could only be divided into three classes. According to the parents, this resulted in class sizes of 28 students. In addition, there are new school children moving in, especially due to pending construction projects that are ready for occupancy. “In a class with 28 elementary school students, well-differentiated, good teaching is also out of the question. In particular, weaker-performing children will then be left behind,” the letter says. Carrying out the teacher shortage on the backs of the children is not justifiable and “a real disaster.”
The state school board director Irmintraud Wienerl could not be reached for comment on Monday. Headmistress Juliane Dorfmüller weighed all the options, there were “simply no alternatives,” says Kerstin Rehm, district chairwoman of the Bavarian Teachers’ Association. The school authority, the government and the Ministry of Education have set guidelines that Dorfmüller must adhere to. A class size of 28 students is still reasonable, Rehm thinks, albeit not ideal. The acute shortage of teachers must be compensated for by various measures, school groups, for example, can no longer be freely determined and groups are being enlarged, and support hours have to be cancelled. We are currently considering reducing the hours of the students. “We can no longer keep up with the children’s timetable. If we don’t have teachers and we’ve never had children, then we can’t do it,” says Rehm. The teachers, mostly women, could not work any more.
“We no longer have a shortage of teachers, we have a shortage of teachers.”
Rehm can imagine that the Ministry of Education will meet the parents’ demands and provide the elementary school with a teacher. “But then that’s missing somewhere else. We plug a hole and tear open one somewhere else. We no longer have a shortage of teachers, we have a shortage of teachers.” In the meantime, according to Rehm, there are already fourth or fifth semester teachers or pedagogy students who are being integrated into Bavarian schools to meet the need. In Freising, too, there could be teachers in the coming years who are trained in a fast-track process and then teach in schools.
Rehm believes that teaching at primary and secondary school should be better paid. Because those who suffer are ultimately the children. The state of emergency cannot be sat out, there must be a “paradigm shift” and Rehm emphasizes: “The perspective must be drawn back to the essentials.”