ARecords are currently being broken in Hamburg’s schools: According to the school statistics published in February, around 7,500 new pupils were admitted within this school year. The number corresponds to the number of students in all of Hamburg’s Elbe suburbs, resulting in around 350 additional classes. There has never been such an increase.
There is also a registration record for the first class of the coming school year, around 750 children more than last year. The main reason for this are refugee children from the Ukraine, and the proportion of children in whose parents’ home German is not spoken in the majority of cases is increasing accordingly (currently it is 31.4 percent).
According to Hamburg’s school senator, Ties Rabe (SPD), rising student numbers and upcoming retirements make new hires necessary. Accordingly, the city needs 900 new teachers – every year. On Tuesday, Rabe presented measures in the town hall as to how Hamburg wants to achieve this. These include: more training places in the preparatory service and greater opening for career changers.
Raven: Higher pay grade
In addition, youth welfare workers at elementary schools should also be used as pedagogues; Furthermore, an increased use of retired teachers is planned, voluntary work beyond the retirement age and, last but not least, more money. In the future, teachers should receive at least salary level A13; previously, one group lower applied in elementary and intermediate school. According to Rabe, that makes a difference of around 450 euros a month.
The school senator took the opportunity to point out that the “improvement in school quality” also required more teachers. 60 percent of the increase in teaching positions in recent years is due to the increased number of students, but around 40 percent is also due to smaller classes, more all-day offers and frequent double occupancy in the classroom.
Rabe took the opportunity to praise his own politics. Since 2011, the year he took office, the school board has hired more than 1,000 new teachers every year. “Thanks to our forward-looking recruitment policy, we were able to avoid a dramatic shortage of teachers like in other federal states.”
Left: There is also a lack of teachers in Hamburg
The left in the Hamburg Parliament contradicted this on Tuesday and, with reference to a response from the Senate to a question from the parliamentary group, criticized that there was also a shortage of teachers in Hamburg. According to the Senate’s response, a total of 265 teachers are missing. Given the total number of teachers, that’s not much. But the problem occurs more often in schools in socially disadvantaged locations.
This is where most of the vacancies are, most of the long-term sick teachers and most of the part-time jobs. For example, schools in areas with the lowest of six social indices have almost 89 vacancies. In schools in districts with the highest social index, on the other hand, there is even an increase of almost 19 jobs.
Sabine Boeddinghaus, education policy spokeswoman for the left-wing faction, spoke of a “drastic split”. More than half of the teachers work part-time. It is 68 percent in elementary schools and 60 percent in high schools.
Thousands of teachers are missing nationwide. How many exactly, there are widely varying numbers. According to the federal government’s latest national education report, there will be around 23,500 teachers by 2035. The “Education and Upbringing” association, on the other hand, assumes that up to 158,000 teachers will be missing by then.
