Interpreter, dentist, public prosecutor – again and again people from different professions decide to become teachers. The so-called side entrants are very welcome in times of teacher shortages. Their pedagogical gaps should be closed.
Schwerin (dpa/mv) – Anyone who wants to teach as a side entrant in schools should in future be better prepared in front of the children in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. From May 2023, all applicants who have a profession other than teaching should first complete a three-month basic course, primarily in pedagogy and didactics, before starting to work with the students in the new school year. This was announced by Education Minister Simone Oldenburg (left) on Thursday in Schwerin.
Another 450-hour course is scheduled to start on November 1st and prepare those who are new to the profession for the start of the second half of the school year. Each course should offer 200 places – the state is investing more than ten million euros for this, Oldenburg said.
The number of lateral entrants has been growing for years because there are not enough university-trained teachers. According to Oldenburg, every third newly hired teacher in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania was a lateral entrant. Of all the teachers in the northeast, it is now a good one in ten.
Again and again in the past there was criticism from parents and lateral entrants themselves that some of them had to appear in front of classes without any pedagogical preparation and were only qualified later alongside their work. In the future, the side entrants should also complete an extra-occupational qualification, as the minister emphasized. However, they do not have to teach the full weekly number of 27 hours, but receive credit hours.
If you have a master’s degree, you can acquire a teaching position while working and also become a civil servant. The prerequisite for this is that two subjects can be derived from the course, which are taught at schools in the state. The two-year part-time traineeship is intended to make the teaching profession more attractive for lateral entrants – because there, too, there is a shortage of applicants, as has become clear. There are currently 58 teaching positions in MV that could not be filled even after being advertised four times, said Oldenburg.
Anyone who has a bachelor’s degree will in future receive recognition for their teaching qualification after just five years instead of the previous seven. For lateral entrants with a professional qualification, the new regulation means seven instead of the previous ten years.
The new lateral entrant regulation, which has been in writing since December, still has to be approved by the state parliament’s education committee. Cautious applause came from the opposition. The education policy spokeswoman for the FDP parliamentary group, Sabine Enseleit, called the plans a step in the right direction. “We have to seize every opportunity and, above all, a wide range of opportunities if we want to solve the staffing situation in the schools,” said Enseleit. “This is the only way to compensate for the far-sighted education policy of recent years.”