The teacher shortage is viewed by school administrators nationwide as the greatest burden. This is one of the central results of the “German School Barometer”, which was published on Wednesday. According to this, two-thirds of those surveyed state that the lack of personnel makes their work most difficult.
A fifth named digitization and the lack of technical equipment, bureaucracy and administration as well as their own workload as the main problems. The Robert Bosch Foundation has been surveying school management regularly since 2019.
The schooling of refugee and newly immigrated children as well as Corona and the Corona measures, on the other hand, play a subordinate role for the school management: Only one in ten named these areas as particularly challenging when the survey was carried out in autumn 2022 on behalf of the Robert Bosch Foundation. These are the results in detail:
1 staff shortage
More staff and less bureaucracy are cited by more than 40 percent of the school management as the most important levers for “noticeable relief”. One in three respondents would like to have less teaching commitments. Almost 30 percent want administrative assistants. As a result of the staff shortage, four out of five managers state that they cannot offer their students adequate support in learning and in catching up on current learning deficits.
2 learning deficits
Schools in socially difficult situations estimate the proportion of pupils with significant learning deficits at 65 percent, which is an average of 35 percent for all schools. These high shares lead directly to another aspect of the survey, namely the low effectiveness of the Corona catch-up programs. Only a third of all school administrations see these programs as having a positive effect. The assessment is most positive in grammar schools (42 percent).
77
percent of schools in difficult situations see no positive effect of the Corona support programs
In particular, schools in a socially difficult situation were not reached by the support programs: only 23 percent see a positive effect). As a result, 70 percent of school administrations state that they need further funding to overcome the learning deficits. The Robert Bosch Foundation sees the conditions for a future, needs-based distribution of funds as favorable, since three quarters of the schools in socially difficult situations systematically record the learning levels of their students.
3 psychosocial situation
Every third school states that it receives support from school psychologists, but half are not satisfied with the extent: the actual needs cannot be covered. To make matters worse, there are only about 70 percent of schools offering school social work.
Almost 60 percent of the schools participating in the survey stated that they had a high need for further training in dealing with children and young people with psychosocial problems. Almost half would like supervision or coaching on this topic.
40
percent of the schools consider further training on how to deal with refugees to be necessary.
Almost 40 percent of all school administrations consider further training in dealing with children and young people who have fled their homes to be necessary. In all areas, the need for further training in schools in socially disadvantaged locations is higher than average.
4 Refugees
Since March 2022, as many newly immigrated children and young people from other countries have been attending schools as from Ukraine, namely 2.7 percent each. In general, both groups of origin are more often educated in schools in socially difficult situations than in socially balanced ones (four to five percent). The proportion of new immigrants from other countries is higher compared to Ukrainian students at special needs schools (3.2 percent versus 0.8 percent).
71
percent of elementary schools does not assume that there is sufficient support in German for new immigrants.
More than half of the school administrations (59 percent) denied the question of whether there is sufficient support in German for new immigrants at their school. In primary schools in particular, the situation is “dramatic”, the researchers judge: three quarters of primary schools (71 percent) cannot guarantee adequate support.
Almost half of the schools (47 percent) can still accept new immigrants. Seven percent even state that they still have a lot of free capacity. However, it is also becoming apparent that 26 percent of the school administrations no longer see any capacity. 27 percent even state that they are already working beyond their capacity limit.
In particular, schools in socially difficult situations (45 percent) and secondary, junior high and comprehensive schools (38 percent) work beyond their capacity limit and now have to be relieved in a targeted manner
47
percent of the schools still has capacity for new immigrants.
What the Bosch Foundation advises
As a conclusion of the survey, the Robert Bosch Foundation states that more school administration assistants need to be hired and bureaucratic processes reduced. This is the only way to ensure that the school management can concentrate on their “core business” again: “Manage the school and support students in their learning”.
In order to advance digitization, all teachers must be offered a “fundamental qualification in the field of digitization”. This is necessary for up-to-date teaching and “a new exam culture or, to put it better, learning culture”. Prospective teachers in particular would have to acquire the relevant skills during their training. However, the “Monitor Lehrerbildung 2022” has shown that these skills related to digitization are “by far” not yet firmly anchored at the universities.
The Robert Bosch researchers also mention the planned nationwide “Starting Chances Program” for schools in difficult situations. The results of the school barometer also show how important it is to do more for these schools. These schools would have to be “deliberately relieved and supported”. The “Starting Chances Program” must “learn from the mistakes made” of the “Catching up after Corona” program and identify schools that are particularly under pressure and support them in the long term.
The minimum standards in reading, writing and arithmetic must have absolute priority.
Robert Bosch Foundation
In its conclusions, the Bosch Foundation also follows the Conference of Ministers of Education with regard to attaining the basic skills: That all children achieve the minimum standards in reading, writing and arithmetic at the end of elementary school “must now have absolute priority”. To this end, support in the language of instruction German for new immigrants and pupils with a migration background must be guaranteed.
In the same way, more attention must be paid to children from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds and corresponding offer structures must be developed so that these students do not fall behind at the beginning of their educational biography, which is difficult to catch up on.
“A democratic and inclusive society must not lose these children and young people and/or teach them exclusively in special schools,” is another demand. For these reasons, the Robert Bosch Foundation founded the “Wir.Lernen” project at primary schools in Baden-Württemberg.
In addition, psychosocial care must be ensured. The further high demand for school social work and in particular for school psychology must be “sufficiently and sustainably covered”.
The survey was carried out by the Forsa Society for Social Research and Statistical Analysis. 1,055 school administrations from general and vocational schools took part in the nationwide representative sample.
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