North Rhine-Westphalia: gaps in teachers: concern about a drop in quality in training

In combating the shortage of teachers, the state government pulls out many stops - from the point of view of experts, some of the wrong ones.

North Rhine-Westphalia: gaps in teachers: concern about a drop in quality in training

In combating the shortage of teachers, the state government pulls out many stops - from the point of view of experts, some of the wrong ones. They complain about new thumbscrews for teachers and the threat of quality standards being undermined.

Düsseldorf (dpa / lnw) - School researchers, teachers' associations and student representatives warn of a "deprofessionalisation" of the teaching profession when filling staff gaps in North Rhine-Westphalia. Practitioners and scientists consider the deterioration in service law for teachers announced by the state government to be counterproductive - for example through unwanted secondments to other schools or restricted part-time options. This emerges from written statements for an expert hearing by the school committee this Tuesday in the Düsseldorf state parliament.

The discussions are based on a plan of action by the black-green state government for the provision of lessons and proposals by the FDP opposition to deal with the teacher gap and the lack of core competencies in elementary school students.

In a five-year comparison, fourth-graders in North Rhine-Westphalia have clearly fallen behind in German and math, as a recent education study for the Conference of Ministers of Education revealed. When it comes to reading, about one in five students does not achieve the minimum standard, in math this applies to a good 28 percent and one in three fourth graders has significant problems with spelling.

One problem is that there are not enough teachers to provide appropriate individual support. The state government has announced that it will bring an additional 10,000 teachers to schools by 2027. According to calculations by the FDP, at least 17,000 jobs are missing. At the beginning of December, 8,047 of a total of 165,070 teaching positions in North Rhine-Westphalia were vacant.