Munich district – teacher shortage triggers a wave of protests – Munich district

The decision to close classes 2f and 4f at the elementary school in Jagdfeld due to a lack of teaching staff and to divide the pupils into other classes triggered a wave of outrage in Haar. Parents have started an online petition which has had 259 signatures as of Tuesday afternoon. Among them is former mayor Helmut Dworzak (SPD), who, in view of complaints about educational deficits, describes the “discrepancy between political speeches and school activities” as a “scandal”. Other signatories insist on the right to education, accuse politicians of setting the wrong priorities and complain that the school children, who have already been badly affected by the corona pandemic, are once again suffering.

School board director Ursula Löwe does not want to sugarcoat the misery revealed by the case in Haar and a similar one in Oberschleißheim. Many gaps only appeared in the short term. The Realschulen and Gymnasium had reclaimed teaching staff who had been parked at elementary and middle schools. Pregnant teachers should no longer have been allowed to teach in person because of Corona, a regulation that the Council of Ministers withdrew on Tuesday. She has 30 cancellations on the table, says Löwe, which alone accounts for 840 hours a week. Many young teachers assigned from northern Bavaria did not start their service because the journey was too far and affordable housing was not available.

The problems are not new, but they are coming to a head this winter

The problems are not new. But they come to a head. Further, there are few trained educators coming out of universities, student numbers are increasing, and many grade A12 teachers in elementary and middle schools are struggling to make ends meet. The payment is unfair compared to Realschule and Gymnasium teachers, says Löwe. The absence of many young trainee teachers from northern Bavaria is hitting the district of Munich hard, and especially schools in Haar, Ismaning and Garching, where the young teachers at schools on the Nuremberg autobahn still prefer to be employed. Fluctuation there is also particularly high: a mother complains in the Haarer petition that her son had “well over ten class teachers” in three school years.

When the school director describes her crisis management on the first days of school, one can guess how the authorities are trying to overcome the misery. Anyone who has a university degree is not yet a teacher, but they quickly make the list as so-called team teachers who give lessons under the guidance of a pregnant specialist. Of course, student teachers teach up to 15 hours a week alongside the university, and even more after the first state examination. The administrative effort to make this possible is immense, says Löwe; from criminal records to government registration of staff and overturned schedules time and time again. Löwe speaks of a huge “paper war” and expressly praises their school management out in the district.

Open detailed view

So as soon as temporary workers – i.e. so-called team teachers or substitutes – are not available, the only step left is to cancel lessons and combine classes to ensure compulsory teaching. At all secondary schools, for example, the additional classes set up due to a high proportion of immigrants, the hours for extended basic physical education and those for differentiated physical education were canceled, reports Löwe. Some schools have merged classes. With one exception, however, the maximum number of students was not exceeded. In isolated cases, groups had to be merged in subject lessons.

Improvisation is also practiced in elementary schools. There were also major interventions here in the so-called migration classes – in Haar and Oberschleißheim. It is about the possibility of opening an additional class if the proportion of immigrants in a grade is more than 50 percent and there are more than 25 children in each class. This division has been withdrawn. The situation in Haar is good now, says Löwe, there are now 25 to 27 children in the class. Because two part-time employees with 14 and 16 hours have been hired, there will be differentiated teaching. Rector Carolin Friedl relies on this and on flexibility in general, wherever possible. “That helps a lot in everyday school life and enables targeted support even in very heterogeneous learning groups.” According to the school authorities, in Oberschleißheim it was possible to take the pressure off the primary school in the park settlement by having pupils voluntarily switch to another school.

There are an average of 29.4 children in the first grades

Apart from German plus courses, many extras have been eliminated, also because the number of students has now increased significantly. 3,718 school beginners are taught in 125 first classes, with an average class size of 29.4. According to Löwe, the grades in primary schools as a whole are 23.7, and 19.4 in middle schools. In order to fill the gaps, the mobile reserve has shrunk from a good 1,600 weekly teaching hours to a record-low figure of 600. Leo sees himself ill-armed for failures in winter due to illness. In addition, around 1,000 students from Ukraine are also being taught in bridging classes, for which Löwe says teachers had to be found outside the regular staff tableau. Many Ukrainian women are engaged.

In any case, the search for people who can teach continues. Meanwhile, many parents are complaining that the lack of management at the expense of their children is no longer reasonable. “For us parents, this new message is a disaster,” write the initiators of the petition. “How are you supposed to keep your distance in winter when the classrooms are completely overcrowded?” They accuse education policy of failure: “They are children, not building blocks that you just sort into a new box!”