The glaring shortage of teachers is leading to increased recruitment of lateral entrants in all federal states. According to a joint decision by the Ministers of Education in 2013, newcomers to school must be able to present at least a master’s degree or the state examination.
But with the increasing shortage of skilled workers, the first states in Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania now want to lower these minimum requirements. The German Philologists’ Association points this out at the start of the Conference of Ministers of Education this Thursday. According to this, career changers in Brandenburg should no longer need a state examination or master’s degree in order to be employed as a civil servant.
Instead, the Ministry of Culture negotiated with the Education and Science Union (GEW) that these teachers would then be hired at salary levels A11 and A12 instead of A13, the Philologists’ Association complains. This regulation was negotiated without the participation of the civil servants’ association or the philologists’ association and should now be passed in the state parliament.
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is currently advising on a regulation on side entry, which is based on better qualification. Nevertheless, you can also qualify there without an academic degree for teaching, said the chairwoman of the Philology Association (DPhV), Susanne Lin-Klitzing, WELT. “If Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania lower the requirements for career changers and lateral entrants in such a way, an undergraduate teaching degree will become less and less attractive,” she criticized. “Without coordination with the Conference of Ministers of Education, the two countries are making an emergency plan the rule.”
In addition to the obvious reduction in quality, this is a “long-term savings measure at the expense of the students”, because after all, the actual shortage of teachers is still to come in the coming years, warns the DPhV chairwoman. “Such an affront to quality is unthinkable” for grammar school teachers.
In addition, Lin-Klitzing criticized that without compliance with common quality standards, educational equity between the countries would be even more jeopardized. “This means that all previous minimum requirements are looped.”
The Conference of Ministers of Education called on the association of philologists to at least stick to the level of the resolutions of 2013 and to develop comprehensive standards for academics who would like to become teachers through post-qualification. “It has to be about the quality of education and not about a disguised savings model.”
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