The Teacher Problem?

Focus brought this up today....it's a topic which gets mentioned to a limited degree about three or four times a year by public TV forums....the lack of teachers in Germany.

In round numbers, the nation (16 states) is right now (today) missing around 32,000 teachers.  The vacancies exist....they'd hire the folks, if they existed.

By the predictions of the German Civil Service....this issue only increases over the next decade or so....with a need for 1.5 million folks required for public healthcare, teachers, instructors, firemen, cops, the tax office, customs, Job-Centers, etc.

To fill the gap, they've gone and done something that was supposed to be impossible (at least a decade ago)....they've opened the door for people who simply have a university degree but they haven't completed a teacher certification course/internship.  They even admit that some of these situations aren't full-time...with some people filling in as part-time teachers.

How many?  The article states just under 10-percent of teachers are now 'newcomers'.

State by state?  It's different.  Some are finding enough teachers....some aren't.

Different from 'real' teachers?  Well....yeah.  That topic comes up.  The real teachers are still paid by their noted skill-level, and the newcomers are paid to a lesser degree. 

My humble guess is that this will last five or six years, and when the newcomer crowd gets near 35-percent of the total force....they will pop up for a strike, and the whole balance of pay-scale will have to change.

So in the middle of the article, they get to the key point....are parents skeptical of the solution?  Yes.  No one.....not the parents, the real teachers, or the political folks....think that this is really the best deal for students. 

Few Germans remember this, but in the 1990s....schools in the US reached a stage where they were desperate for science and math teachers.  Two resolutions were created.  One....they went and recruited retired military members who had degrees in these areas....sometimes even taking people who had any kind of degree.  But the second resolution was to recruit German teachers, and bring them into the US.  No, there weren't lots of them but it was noticed by the news media and discussed at some levels.

Are the shortages really legit?

Here's the thing...most folks anticipate the population of Germany to shrink from 82-million to around 70-million within twenty-five years.   As much as the migrant population might stall that....one has to ask if all the migrants and immigrants will do a long-term stay, or pack up when peace comes to Iraq and Syria.  Will you really need these 1.5-million folks to fill government jobs in the next fifteen years? Probably not.  This teaching shortage?  Is it really long-term?  People say yes, but will you really need the teachers in twenty years?  I'd have some doubt.

It's a curious problem.  Jobs that exist and recruitment going on, but no one to fill the jobs. Adding to this....would you even have the stamina to handle young German punks?