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Many teachers feel burdened

Photo: Julian Stratenschulte / picture alliance / dpa

The overwhelming majority of teachers in North Rhine-Westphalia feel overworked. This was the result of a survey by the GEW education union among almost 24,000 teachers. On a scale of 0 to 10, respondents rated their personal feeling of stress as an average of 8.21. 92 percent reported a score of 7 or higher.

»Unfortunately, the trend is clear: more and more teachers are leaving their jobs because the stress is so high that they no longer see their job as meaningful. They often don’t have the time to be educationally effective,” says the union leader in North Rhine-Westphalia, Ayla Çelik.

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It was recently announced that a total of 930 teachers in North Rhine-Westphalia will have terminated their employment contracts in 2023, 130 more than in the previous year. At the same time, according to the school ministry in Düsseldorf, there is currently a shortage of around 7,000 teachers. “The employees are at their limit,” warns Çelik. More and more work has to be shouldered by a few. The quantity of work comes at the expense of quality. »This situation is stressful and demoralizing. Packages of political measures such as the restriction of unconditional part-time work further exacerbate this stressful situation.

"After all the events of the past few years - the corona pandemic, Russia's attack on Ukraine and now the war in the Middle East - teachers, students and students finally need some space to breathe," comments Dilek Engin, education policy spokeswoman for the SPD parliamentary group in the Düsseldorf state parliament. That's why the curriculum needs to be “detoxified” in the short term and a comprehensive reform in the long term, Engin continued. »In addition, the teaching profession must finally be made more attractive. This includes working time models that take the actual working reality into account and more trust in the pedagogical power of our teachers.«

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