Saarbrücken/Gütersloh (dpa/lhe) - By 2030, every primary school child nationwide should be offered all-day care - but Saarland will lack 800 educators. This emerges from a study published by the Bertelsmann Foundation on Tuesday.
Last September, the federal and state governments decided on a legal entitlement to all-day care in primary schools, which is being gradually introduced. From the 2026/2027 school year, the regulation will apply to children in the 1st grade, and from 2029/2030 to all grades. By the end of the decade there should be a place for every child with support for 40 hours per week.
"The Saarland will not be able to implement the legal entitlement for all children by 2030, because the need for skilled workers can hardly be covered by then," explained Kathrin Bock-Famulla, an expert on early childhood education at the Bertelsmann Foundation. Together with all those responsible, the state must therefore launch a long-term specialist offensive in order to give every primary school child the best educational opportunities.
According to the foundation, 63 percent of primary school children in Saarland are currently cared for all day. This puts the federal state well above the West German average of 47 percent. Nine percent of the children would visit a shorter afternoon offer until 2.30 p.m. If some of the children continued to take advantage of the shorter care in the coming years, the shortage of staff would be somewhat lower: Then there would be a lack of around 400 additional educators, according to the "Specialist Radar for KiTa and Primary School 2022".
