Frankfurt a.M. – In view of the figures presented today on the need for reform and calculations on the absence of educational professionals by the Bertelsmann Foundation, the Education and Science Union (GEW) sees an urgent need for action by all those responsible to relieve the burden on employees in early childhood education. “The professionals in the daycare centers are heavily overworked and are in a serious crisis. Due to the high level of absence due to illness, the staff are increasingly coming under extraordinary pressure. This seriously endangers the quality of early childhood education,” said Doreen Siebernik, GEW board member for youth welfare and social work, on Tuesday in Frankfurt. “Now, rapid and targeted measures are needed by the federal and state governments to resolve the staff shortage. It must be ensured that qualified care, education and upbringing of children is guaranteed; children have a right to this!”
Siebernik warned against lowering the standards for pedagogical qualifications in order to compensate for the shortage of staff. In some western federal states, there are worrying tendencies to use insufficiently qualified staff as substitute staff. “This development is extremely dangerous,” stressed the GEW board member. “If unqualified staff are used, this requires additional instruction and support from specialists. This further increases their workload and negatively affects the quality of care.” It is therefore crucial to implement the measures aimed at in the skilled worker strategy and to ensure sustainable and good funding for this. “The people who come to the facilities without training run the risk of being burned out in the system. It must be ensured that providers and municipalities retrain this staff and are supported in this by the federal and state governments.”
Siebernik sees another challenge in the fact that there are no uniform regulations on the structural quality of early childhood education. For example, in East Germany, with the number of children falling, there is currently an opportunity to better distribute skilled workers. However, there are no corresponding laws to implement this efficiently. In order to stabilize the personnel situation in the long term and to ensure representation, the GEW daycare expert advocated that the federal and state governments establish common scientific standards that apply nationwide as part of the daycare quality law. “The federal government has not yet addressed a concrete improvement in the situation and has broken its word in the coalition agreement,” Siebernik emphasized. “If employees are to be relieved of their workload and enabled to support individual educational processes in their facilities, then the working conditions must be aligned accordingly.”
The federal government, states and municipalities must act urgently. “The proposals to solve the crisis are on the table. The GEW is ready for a solution-oriented dialogue,” emphasized Siebernik. She pointed out the social responsibility of everyone to stabilize the system in the long term and to further develop it qualitatively: “The GEW is committed to a nationwide daycare quality law with uniform standards and a comprehensive skilled worker offensive. Key to this are a better skilled worker-child ratio, more time for management tasks in the daycare center, time for preparation and follow-up, the right to further training and specialist advice.”
Info: Absences due to illness among childcare professionals are dramatic in 2023. On average, educators are absent almost 30 days a year. This is significantly higher than the average of around 20 days for other professional groups. The sickness rate of around 8 percent in childcare is also significantly higher than the average of around 6 percent in other sectors.
According to the authors of the Bertelsmann study, there are many reasons for this high level of absenteeism. Respiratory diseases are the most common cause, followed by mental illnesses. These have risen steadily in recent years and are far above the average for other professions. The ongoing overload of daycare staff due to sickness absences has a massive impact on the quality of the services offered by daycare centers. In order to break the cycle of staff shortages and growing pressure, the Bertelsmann Foundation, in cooperation with the Skilled Workers Forum, is calling for binding legal measures. Clear regulations on the financing of qualified replacement staff for sickness absences are urgently needed. Based on the current absence rates, almost 97,000 additional full-time positions would have to be created nationwide. This means additional personnel costs of around 5.8 billion euros per year.
