More than 40 percent of teachers worked part-time in the last school year. Women in particular often reduced their working hours. The differences between the federal states are enormous.
The part-time quota among teachers rose last school year to its highest level in the past ten years. In the 2022/2023 school year there were after Information from the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) Around 724,800 teachers work at general schools in Germany – 42.3 percent of them work part-time.
In the previous school year, the rate was 40.6 percent, making it the highest value in the previous ten years, as Destatis announced. Female teachers in particular worked part-time: around half of the women in schools worked part-time, more than twice as many as teachers, where the figure was only around a fifth.
Hamburg and Bremen are at the forefront
There were clear differences between the federal states. While in Hamburg 54.4 percent and Bremen 49.9 percent and thus around half of the teaching staff at general education schools worked part-time, in Thuringia at 24.1 percent only around one in four teachers and a good one in five teachers in Saxony-Anhalt ( 21.4 percent) part-time.
The teaching profession has an above-average part-time rate compared to other professional groups. In 2022, 30.2 percent of dependent employees worked part-time across all economic sectors.
According to Destatis, one reason for the comparatively high quota in schools is the high proportion of women among teachers: While women made up almost three quarters of the teaching staff at general education schools at 73.1 percent in the 2022/2023 school year, the proportion of women was among dependent employees in all sectors of the economy in 2022 at 48.0 percent.
More than a third of the teaching staff are 50 years or older
The statistics office also had new information regarding the age structure. Accordingly, more than a third of the approximately 724,800 teachers in Germany were 50 years old or older. In contrast, the proportion of people starting their careers is lower: those under 35 made up 21.1 percent of the teaching staff at general schools.
There are also big differences between federal states in terms of age structure. While 57.1 percent of teachers in Saxony-Anhalt were over 50 years old and older, the proportion in Saarland was 28.2 percent.
The statisticians also observed a further decline in new students entering the teaching profession. The number fell last year for the second time in a row. In the 2022 academic year, around 45,000 people began studying to become teachers. That was around 3.2 percent fewer students than in the previous year and around 7 percent fewer than ten years ago.
In a ten-year comparison, the number of teaching graduates with a master’s or state examination degree also fell. In the 2022 exam year, 28,700 teacher training students passed their final exam. That is 10.5 percent less than ten years ago.