DKLK Survey 2024: Labor shortage is growing – at the expense of children

Bavaria’s state figures were now available for the event in Munich. The DKLK 2024 study shows above all: the shortage of workers has become even worse. High quality language education is still one of the main topics and was the focus of this year’s study.

3,055 day care center managers from Germany were surveyed as part of the DKLK 2024 survey, of which 865 came from Bavaria. A shortage of qualified teachers continues to dominate the day-to-day management of a day care centre. Around 83 percent of those surveyed from Bavaria said that the labor shortage has worsened in the past twelve months. Around 71 percent said that, due to the dramatic situation, workers are being hired today who would not have been hired a few years ago due to a lack of qualifications. The results of the country assessment show the drama of the current situation in Bavaria.

BLLV President Simone Fleischmann: “The lack of workers was already great and now it is increasing. Highly qualified educational staff work up to their limits and beyond – and still can’t do justice to the children. Politicians need to act urgently now, because we will be carrying the deficits with us for years to come. Above all, the urgent need to improve individual language skills is hardly made up for later. The topic is of particular importance to the majority of educators surveyed. They want to give this to the children. How this can be achieved is increasingly a mystery.”

Lack of staff at the expense of funding

The educational staff feel the effects of staff shortages in Bavarian day care centers every day. Staff shortages lead to increased absenteeism and sick leave and increase dissatisfaction with educational work among staff.

Tomi Neckov, 2nd Vice-President of BLLV and Federal Vice-Chairman of the Association for Education and Education (VBE), who presented the results of the survey in Munich: “We want politicians to feel more responsible for the early fitting out of the area. childhood education in such a way that a successful educational foundation is established. In addition to staff recruitment drives, appropriate pay for skilled workers and an attractive work environment, this also includes the use of multi-professional teams. The fact that 41 percent of those surveyed in Bavaria say that they do not have a single educational expert with a special qualification for the field of language education is unacceptable.”

Those surveyed in Bavaria said that lack of time (51.4 percent) and lack of staff (31.4 percent) were the biggest challenges regarding the topic of “language education”.

A lack of workers means a lack of educational opportunities

The results clearly show that there is a lack of staff and time to give the children the educational opportunities they deserve. Measuring skills and deficits, for example through language ability tests, is of no help if there are no opportunities for support. “Day care centers in Bavaria make a serious case for language education – but unfortunately politicians do not see day care centers as educational facilities, but only as care facilities; as recently emerged in the debate on the draft law and now the upcoming law to introduce and implement mandatory surveys of language ability and language support measures before starting school . Additional measures do not make sense because high-quality language education takes place permanently and is integrated into everyday life in day care centers. Politicians must ensure that this can be achieved and an appropriate staff to child ratio is more important than ever in the day to day life of education. Because language learning doesn’t work without a relationship!” said Sarah Heße, head of social and educational services at BLLV.

Those surveyed in the study also agree with this: 65.9 percent say they need a better staff-to-child ratio to be able to provide high-quality language education to the the required level. Because: About 91 percent of those surveyed in Bavaria said that the skilled worker ratio for children under the age of three in their center is worse than scientifically recommended.