Saxony fulfills the legal entitlement to all-day care, but at what price? A full-time employee in the Free State takes care of almost nine more children than one in West Germany. There is a shortage of around 11,000 skilled workers for alignment.
Leipzig/Gütersloh (dpa/sn) - Saxony has enough skilled workers to be able to offer every primary school child all-day care by the end of the decade. In order for this funding to be as well staffed as in West Germany, more than 11,000 additional specialists would have to be recruited. This is the result of the "Facharbeiter-Radar" for day-care centers and elementary schools from the Bertelsmann Foundation (Gütersloh).
"In 2030, Saxony will have an adequate supply of skilled workers to fulfill the legal entitlement for all primary school children. However, the staff ratios in the after-school care centers have so far been significantly worse than the West German average," said Kathrin Bock-Famulla, an expert at the Foundation for Early Childhood Education, according to a statement on Tuesday . The legal framework for better staff ratios must now be created so that the additional staff can also be hired.
The legal entitlement does not specify any nationwide standards for staffing. The differences are significant: While the after-school care centers in West Germany have a personnel ratio of 1 to 6, in the East it is 1 to 14 and in Saxony it is 1 to 14.7. A full-time specialist in the Free State has to take care of almost nine more children than in a West German after-school care center.
In Saxony, 87 percent of children of primary school age use an all-day offer. This means that Saxony is slightly above the average value for the eastern German states of 83 percent and 47 percent in western Germany. In addition, 1 percent of children in Saxony attend an over-lunch offer that is available until around 2:30 p.m. The East German average is 3.5 percent, in West German federal states 18 percent.
