Gütersloh/Erfurt (dpa/th) – According to a study, a daycare teacher has to look after too many children in Thuringia. Arithmetically, there is one full-time employee for every 5.1 children in the crèche groups and 10.7 children in the kindergarten groups, according to the country monitoring of early childhood education systems presented by the Bertelsmann Foundation on Thursday. According to this, an educator in Thuringia has to look after almost three more kindergarten children than in western German states.
There are almost enough daycare places in the Free State to meet the parents’ demand. However, 91 percent of daycare children in Thuringia are looked after in groups whose staffing is not child-friendly, it said. The educational mandate for most children cannot be implemented. The state government must create the conditions for hiring more staff in the day-care centers through legal reforms.
In order to achieve a staff ratio that corresponds to scientific recommendations, around 10,800 additional specialists would have to be hired in Thuringia. This would result in additional personnel costs of more than 558 million euros per year.
According to the study, the shortage of skilled workers is a double problem: too little staff not only worsens the quality of early childhood education for the children, but also the working conditions for the skilled workers. This reduces the chances of keeping existing employees in the job, which further exacerbates the shortage of staff. “In order for this vicious circle to be broken, there needs to be a long-term political priority for better staffing that is recognizable for the daycare centers,” it said.
