Thousands of new teaching positions are needed for the schooling of minors from the Ukraine who have fled to Germany. This is the result of a study by the German Economic Institute (IW), which WELT AM SONNTAG is exclusively available to.
Around 242,000 minors who fled Ukraine were registered in Germany by May 5, and the trend is rising. This corresponds to at least 3.5 percent of children and young people from Ukraine.
“Assuming the current staff-teacher ratios at the schools, 13,500 additional full-time equivalent teachers would be necessary with a share of 3.5 percent,” says study author Wido Geis-Thöne. But if the proportion increases to five percent, there are already 19,400 teachers.
“Assuming a class size of 15 students, which makes sense for welcome classes, there would be 20,200 full-time equivalent teachers at 3.5 percent and 28,900 at five percent.”
In order to provide short-term relief, several federal states have launched calls to win back retired teachers. Since the beginning of the war, new contracts have been signed with a few hundred, as a survey by WELT AM SONNTAG among the education ministries of the federal states shows.
In Hamburg, for example, 84 teachers would like to return from retirement to help school Ukrainian children, in Baden-Württemberg 60, in Saxony-Anhalt and in Lower Saxony 88.
In the short term, this strategy makes sense, says Anja Bensinger-Stolze, board member of the Education and Science Union (GEW). However, the way of reactivation “has already been used extensively”, the potential is “final”.
