Berlin, Dusseldorf The school of tomorrow needs top teachers – but top students are not interested in the teaching profession. A-level high school graduates have an enormous respect for teachers. However, only eleven percent of them can imagine a life as an educator. This is shown by a study by the Stifterverband with McKinsey, which is available to the Handelsblatt.
Volker Meyer-Guckel, General Secretary of the Stifterverband, sees this as a major problem. “Excellent teachers are needed to prepare the next generation for the future working and living environment”. In order to also interest the best high school graduates in teaching, the teaching career urgently needs to become more attractive again.
According to the survey of 432 young men and women, the wrong people are significantly more interested in the teaching profession. Those who are interested consider themselves to be empathetic and enjoy dealing with young people, but their grades are worse.
The Abitur average of the interested high school graduates fell compared to an earlier survey in 2014 from 2.1 to just 2.5 – and that with a trend towards increasing average Abitur grades. “Good Abitur grades alone do not necessarily qualify you for the teaching profession, but they are a good indicator of professional adeptness,” says Meyer-Guckel.
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According to the survey, potential future teachers are only marginally enthusiastic about digitization. Only every eighth interested person enjoys dealing with technologies, only a quarter feels fit in digital work. Without digitization, nothing will work in the school of the future, even after the pandemic.
Applicants lack self-confidence
In many cases, they lack the necessary personal skills that teachers should have: Only ten to 13 percent of the interested high school graduates count high self-confidence, resilience to setbacks or the ability to speak in front of groups as their particular strengths.
Top students, on the other hand, are more drawn to business. “Fun at work”, “income” and “opportunities for advancement” are particularly important to them. However, they hardly associate these aspects with the teaching profession.
Deficits in many trainee teachers are nothing new: the “Potsdam teacher study” caused an uproar in 2006: A survey of 2,500 trainee teachers revealed “not a small number of them had problematic prerequisites”. These included “restrictions in resilience, deficits in social and communicative skills and only moderately developed self-confidence,” attested the psychologist Uwe Schaarschmidt at the time.
The Minister of Education at the time, Ute Erdsiek-Rave (SPD) was extremely concerned and promoted the use of the “self-test” developed by Schaarschmidt for those interested in becoming a teacher. In view of the chronic shortage of teachers, however, the ministers are in the unfortunate position of hardly being able to choose – “we have to take everyone,” they say behind closed doors.
According to figures from the Conference of Ministers of Education (KMK), there will be a shortage of almost 11,000 teachers in primary schools nationwide by 2025. In the middle school and in vocational schools, there will be an average shortage of around 3,000 workers per year until 2030. The Bertelsmann Foundation assumes that there is an even greater shortage. According to their calculations, by 2025 there will be a shortage of 26,000 additional teachers at primary schools.
The new KMK President Karin Prien (CDU) wants to address natural scientists from the bachelor’s degree in Schleswig-Holstein. In general, the teaching profession must be “more appreciated”.
The Stifterverband and McKinsey recommend that politicians give schools more freedom in hiring teachers and make the admission criteria more flexible. In addition, they recommend a “systematic advancement and qualification system” – and as the icing on the cake, the offer “to be able to gain experience in other systems and areas for a year”, for example in the economy.
The PISA expert at the OECD, Andreas Schleicher, has long criticized the lack of development opportunities for teachers in Germany. The Association of Philologists, i.e. the organization of grammar school teachers, even complains about an “increasing de-professionalization of the teaching profession”.
The authors of the Stifterverband study recommend opening up the job more to career changers. So far, the federal states have been using this option more as an emergency solution and without coordination. Instead, they would have to complete the promised standards for the post-qualification of career changers and lateral entrants as soon as possible and not only in 2023, demands the chairwoman of the Philology Association, Susanne Lin-Klitzing.
Campaign as for the Bundeswehr
The personnel consultancy Kienbaum recommends an image campaign: “The very successful campaign of the Bundeswehr in the social media has shown how great the effect can be,” says partner Hilmar Schmidt, who has been advising the public service for a long time.
The Ministers of Education should definitely “address the enormously high meaningfulness of the teaching profession”. After all, there is “a clear tendency among young people to prefer jobs with a purpose”. This also applies to the security of the teaching profession. Politicians have already taken the latter to heart: In the meantime, all countries have made civil servants teachers again.
Now, however, they also have to raise their salaries, says Schmidt. “Top executives are deterred by the amount of remuneration, especially in the main, junior high and elementary schools.”
Digitization is essential for the school of tomorrow.
(Photo: dpa)
According to data from the OECD, German teachers are already well paid today. Their remuneration is a good 70 percent higher than that of colleagues from other industrialized countries. In addition, they earn on average up to nine percent more than other academics in Germany. However, the well-paid high school teachers pull the German average up significantly.
Further training is also key, Stifterverband, McKinsey and Kienbaum agree. When it comes to digitization and media education, there is “enormous room for improvement” among teachers, says consultant Schmidt. Schools with a focus on content are “very attractive to young, talented teachers” and have significantly fewer staff shortages. Schools with modern infrastructure are also an incentive.
Diverse career prospects required
Finland could be a role model for Germany. Despite significantly lower salaries, there are seven to ten applicants for every teaching position there. OECD Director Schleicher attributes this to “fantastic opportunities to develop bottom-up teaching and clearer and more diverse career prospects beyond the post of headmaster”.
The Netherlands is also a positive example. Schleicher says that 85 percent of the relevant decisions are made locally in the schools. In Germany, on the other hand, it is only 13 percent.
However, as long as the digitization of schools lags far behind that of any average company, an image campaign will be difficult. Here the new Federal Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (FDP) not only promises the continuation of federal aid. Together with the federal states and municipalities, she also wants to collect ideas on how to implement them more quickly on site.
At the same time, the universities must also teach future educators more digital skills, the Stifterverband demands. Kienbaum recommends the use of IT assistants in order to at least relieve them of tiresome IT administration in everyday life.
More: Minister of Education Stark-Watzinger: “We want to start a decade of innovations”