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Looking for more and better people: the education ministers are overhauling teacher training

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68,000, 115,000 or even around 180,000: The forecasts of how many teachers will be missing from Germany's schools by 2035 vary.

One thing is certain, however: If more people are not immediately trained for this profession than before, the staff shortage in colleges will become even worse, even more positions cannot be filled, and even more classes will be canceled.

The Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (KMK) has drawn conclusions from this.

On Friday she presented in an “enabling paper” how the previously quite rigid framework for teacher training should be softened.

Anyone who wants to get into the teaching profession via the regular route usually has to study for five years at a university to become a teacher (Bachelor/Master or state examination), in two subjects, such as German and history or mathematics and physics.

There is also educational and didactic content.

This first phase of training mainly includes theory.

After studying, the second, primarily practical phase of training at a school follows with the traineeship or preparatory service.

Depending on the federal state, it lasts between twelve and 24 months.

Experts have recently suggested various reforms so that in the end “more and better people come out,” as educational consultant Mark Rackles demands.

The KMK expressly does not want to fundamentally change the model, but does want to open up new paths into the profession.

In the future, it should firstly be easier to become a teacher with just one subject, secondly to complete the teacher training course dual and thirdly to start a teaching master's degree through a lateral entry.

The innovations are based at least in part on recommendations from the Science Council and the Standing Scientific Commission (SWK).

As the KMK resolution states, they are intended to make a “substantial contribution to overcoming the shortage of teachers” possible.

The plans in detail:

1. Single-subject teachers: fewer hurdles, more opportunities

Anyone who does not have a teaching qualification with two subjects has so far only had the chance of a traineeship in special exceptional cases: if there are not enough competitors with a regular teaching qualification and if two “teaching-relevant subjects” can be derived from their non-teaching university qualification.

According to the KMK, an exception to this “two-subject principle” currently only exists for art and music.

This should change.

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In the future, the education ministers also want to enable applicants with a university degree in just one subject to have access to the traineeship;

at least for certain types of schools in which there is a particular shortage of staff.

The KMK hopes that “new target groups can be won over to the teaching profession”.

In addition, foreign teaching qualifications could be more easily recognized in Germany;

another positive effect.

In their paper, the education ministers also point out that regular teacher training courses with only one subject could be set up at universities;

approximately from the master's phase onwards.

But there is obviously still a need for coordination here: "Such a path requires an agreement between the countries."

2. Dual teacher training course: more practice – and money

The education ministers want theory and practice, i.e. the first and second phases of teacher training, to be more closely linked.

They don't go so far as to say that dual study programs should become the new standard format for teacher training, but they see "additional opportunities to specifically attract additional groups to study teacher training."

Among other things, the idea is to lure people with money.

The KMK proposes various models.

For example, in a teacher training course (Bachelor's/Master's or state examination), theory and practice should be linked more closely and more continuously than before from the start.

Students should contractually commit themselves to individual schools during their studies.

So they would be paid during their training.

Another related idea is to integrate “practical professional elements” and content from the preparatory service into a master’s program, for example.

Anyone who has a non-teaching bachelor's degree could then - unlike before - take up a teaching master's degree and earn money in this phase;

different than in other master's programs.

The KMK wants to create “special motivation” for the change.

Another option is a part-time, dual course of study: people are already employed at a school as lateral or lateral entrants and teach on set days.

On other days they complete seminars at a university.

3. Lateral entry master's degree: Turbo training?

Anyone who completes a university degree but does not have a teaching qualification, perhaps who has been working for years, should be given a "science-based form" of lateral entry into the teaching profession: through a master's degree, which the universities set up as an additional course of study.

The universities determine who has access here.

They should also design the new master's degree program in such a way "that they take the KMK standards into account in the scope of credits of a regular teacher training degree program."

So there should be no compromises in the content.

The result could be a kind of turbo-charged teacher training course that is completed after two years instead of five.

If the measures are implemented, the universities will have a lot of work to do: they will have to concretely pave the newly outlined paths into the teaching profession.

It is also unclear how the new ones will affect the existing offers.

How many people still choose the comparatively longer, more complex route to becoming a teacher when there are faster, easier routes?

And where should the staff at the universities come from to design and implement the new offerings?

According to the KMK decision, such questions should be scientifically supported.

Ultimately, the countries can decide for themselves whether, how and which of the measures they want to implement.

From the perspective of Stefanie Hubig, Education Minister of Rhineland-Palatinate and coordinator of the A-states led by the SPD, this is also correct because the situation in the federal states is very different.

Criticism, however, comes from the Education and Science Union (GEW).

“The sticking point,” complains chairwoman Anja Bensinger-Stolze: “The concrete implementation decision is still missing, so it is currently not possible to assess what impact these measures will have, particularly on the quality of teacher training.”

The GEW woman criticized that the KMK had not even agreed on a further expansion of training capacities at universities and in the preparatory service.

The shortage of teachers cannot be combated successfully if medium and long-term measures that are binding for all countries are not agreed upon.