The beautiful things are the first to disappear, says daycare manager Barbara Nolte. Elaborate handicraft projects or a trip to the farm need enough staff. But the educational mission of day-care centers is also increasingly at risk: “Often it’s just about pure care,” says Nolte. A recent survey of 5,400 daycare center managers conducted by the Education and Training Association (VBE) shows that the quality of education is suffering from the shortage of skilled workers in daycare centers.
The results are unequivocal: almost 95 percent of daycare center managers state that the staff shortage in their facility has worsened over the past twelve months. It has become more difficult to find suitable educators – and the existing ones are often reaching their breaking point.
“We haven’t been able to keep to the recommended care key for a long time,” says Nolte, who runs a daycare center in the Paderborn district in North Rhine-Westphalia. Ideally, one educator should be responsible for a maximum of three children under the age of three or seven to eight children over the age of three. According to the survey, however, this cannot be guaranteed in more than two thirds of all cases.
“We have to do more and more work”
This reduces the pedagogical quality, say 88 percent of those surveyed, and some offers are even completely eliminated. Language support and musical education, for example, are often neglected, reports Nolte, who is a consultant at the VBE NRW. The children suffer as a result, but so do the educators. “Many people are passionate about their job,” says Nolte, but under these circumstances you burn out quickly. Eight out of ten daycare managers state that the lack of staff is a detriment to the joy of work. In addition, due to the high workload, sick leave often increases.
Politicians do not live up to their legal responsibilities, criticizes VBE Vice-Chairman Tomi Neckov. Many daycare center managers seem to share this impression. Although eight out of ten still enjoy the job, many do not feel valued enough by politics.
“We are currently in a downward spiral,” says Nolte. “We are supposed to be able to handle more and more tasks, with ever more dwindling resources.” Political goals such as longer opening times are impossible to achieve. Because in practice, according to the survey, shorter opening times, stand-in workers and overtime help to get the situation under control. In the long term, however, other instruments are needed, say many of those surveyed: better pay, new jobs and more individual career prospects.