Missing Teachers

The Association of German High School Teachers estimates that up to 16,000 educators will be missing in schools this year and has warned of the dramatic effects of a teacher drought.

The Deutscher Philologenverband, an association of German high school teachers, has estimated that the number of teachers in schools has dramatically fallen as compared to last year. The number of unfilled teaching jobs has risen from 10,000 last year to between 14,000 and 16,000 this year, according to the association.

As a result, around 1 million hourly lessons will be cancelled national-wide each week during this school year, head of the association, Heinz-Peter Meidinger, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper over the weekend.

While the situation varies widely among the German states, Meidinger said it is the worst teacher crisis German schools have suffered in over 30 years.

Many teachers do not come to class because they either are on sick leave or are attending advanced training courses.

Unqualified substitutes

That means a huge number of substitutes -- who often do not receive the same amount of training as the day-to-day teachers -- must fill their shoes, Meidinger said. More than one in four substitute teachers do not have a university degree, the association added.

In Bavaria, for example, forest rangers, trained translators, engineers and civil servants are often standard teacher substitutes in high schools.

Meidinger said a large number of teachers reaching retirement age is one reason for the shortage. The other is that fewer university students are becoming teachers, he said.

The long-term threat to the quality of education in Germany will also probably not change in the next five to ten years, said Meidinger. "The absence of teachers will be even more dramatic," he added.

While vocational and non-academic high schools suffer more from a teacher deficiency, elementary, mid-academic and college-preparatory schools are also searching for more educators.

Particularly dramatic is the lack of math, physics, Latin and religion teachers, the association said. Schools in many German states no longer provide the required number of lessons in these subjects each week, or when they do, substitute teachers without state qualifications conduct them.

In high schools in Bavaria, Baden-Württemburg and North Rhine-Westphalia, but also in Hesse, the Rhineland-Palatinate and Lower Saxony, nearly all subjects are affected.

Last week, German President Horst Köhler described the situation as "shameful" and demanded that more money be invested in Germany's schools. He said only one in 10 euros in public funds flows into the German educational system. That leaves Germany below the prevailing average of member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD).