So that not so many lessons are canceled, the teachers in the country should initially work more. You can have the hours paid out or accumulate them – and stroll away from 2032/33.
Magdeburg (dpa/sa) – In order to reduce the loss of lessons, teachers in Saxony-Anhalt are expected to stand in front of the classes for one hour longer per week from mid-March. The cabinet decided on Tuesday that there should be a working time account for the additional hours worked, said Education Minister Eva Feußner (CDU) on Tuesday in Magdeburg. In the next step, the associations would be heard. After further consideration by the cabinet, the new regulation could come into force in March, the minister said. By the school year 2027/28, teachers should teach an additional hour per week.
Excluded are around 2000 teachers over the age of 62 and disabled people with a degree of 50 percent or more. Temporary teachers are also not recorded. There are a total of around 14,000 teachers in Saxony-Anhalt.
Anyone who is obliged to pay the so-called advance notice should be able to have it paid out monthly, said Feußner. Optionally, the working time can be accumulated up to a volume of up to 1000 hours. According to Feußner, this corresponds to about one school year, but she expects that only a few teachers will achieve this. From the school year 2032/33 it should be possible to reduce the hours; for example in the form of a sabbatical or earlier retirement. An easing of the teacher shortage is expected in the 2030s.
The Minister of Education emphasized: “We are not increasing working hours, we are shifting working hours.” With the so-called anticipation hour, Saxony-Anhalt is in the average of the teacher working hours of the federal states. For primary school teachers, the new regulation means 28 instead of the previous 27 hours of instruction per week, and for secondary and grammar school teachers 26 instead of 25 hours of instruction per week. With the additional hour per teacher, a working time volume would be gained that corresponds to 500 full-time teaching positions. Around 1,000 workers are missing from the schools in the country.
The Education and Science Union (GEW) has sharply criticized the measure. “Obviously the teachers should now carry away the unspeakable personnel policy of the state government of the past years. From the point of view of the GEW Sachsen-Anhalt, this additional hour is a wrong measure for the already overburdened colleges, which we do not accept!” The union has invited rallies to Magdeburg and Halle for February 13th and 14th.
According to the most recent survey, only around 93.5 percent of the lessons are covered. Tuition varies depending on the type of school. Most recently, it was 95 percent at primary schools, almost 98 percent at high schools, and 88 percent at secondary schools and community schools. The country has been trying to take countermeasures for many years, for example by hiring more career changers. Most recently, the government announced that it wanted to pay primary school teachers better. The state parliament as the budget legislator must decide on the concrete steps.
It has also been decided that the schools should be given more financial freedom to compensate for a temporary lack of teachers. In addition, in the future there should be more delegations from well-supplied schools to those that lack a particularly large number of teachers. Minister of Education Feußner said that after the regulation came into force, it would have to be examined how the teaching was provided at the individual school types and how the work capacity gained could best be used.
