Germany faces teacher shortage due to aging population
Of the 709,000 teachers employed in said school year, almost 41 percent worked part-time, and more than one-third were aged 50 and over.
In the 2021-2022 school year, the part-time employment rate of teachers in Germany’s schools of general education reached its highest level in the past decade, the German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) said on Monday.
Of the 709,000 teachers employed in said school year, almost 41 percent worked part-time, and more than one-third were aged 50 and over.
Germany’s education system is facing the “biggest shortage of teachers in 50 years,” the association of the country’s teachers warned at the end of January, pointing to failures in the government’s education policy over the past 15 years.
Currently, there are 12,000 vacant teaching positions in Germany, according to a recent survey of the federal states’ ministries of education and cultural affairs conducted by Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND). According to the teachers’ association, however, the actual figure could be as high as 40,000.
The country’s shortage of teachers is mostly caused by demographic change and is “part of the general shortage of skilled workers,” the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Laender (KMK) said in a statement. It would “hardly be possible to train enough teachers in the future.”
Due to its aging population, Europe’s largest economy is facing a severe shortage of skilled workers in many sectors. By 2030, Germany’s labor market would require six million additional workers, Chancellor Olaf Scholz told the newspaper Bild am Sonntag earlier this month.
