Classroom Guarantees

The problem, which is by no means endemic to Berlin, is the number of classes which have to be cut every year due to a simple lack of staff. Principals up and down the country are practiced in the chaotic art of last-minute reorganization of timetables and redistribution of their teachers in order to provide as much education as they possibly can.

But for all their efforts, it remains the case that each week children across Germany are granted extra playtime, because there simply aren't enough teachers around to teach them. For the most part, the teachers are absent as a result of little more than minor ailments, and though the consequences might seem significant to an average nine-year old, parents, unions and political opponents would beg to differ.

According to official figures, which vary from one state to another, an average of between 2 and 3 percent of all school classes fall by the wayside annually. But that is by no means the whole picture. Last year, teachers in Berlin were absent for a total of 10.1 percent of scheduled classes, and although three-quarters were spared cancellation by having other staff fill in, the replacements were not always teachers.

Too many timetable irregularities

Katrin Schulze-Bernt, the Berlin Christian Democrats' education spokeswoman, said she was concerned that, as things stand, children are not getting their full quota of prescribed learning.

"Every 10th hour is not taught by the regular teacher, and I'm concerned that the replacements used are not always professionals, but are sometimes just after-school carers who cannot actually teach."

Indeed primary schools in Berlin do regularly have to fall back on the help of after-school carers to keep the children entertained throughout the course of the school day. High schools students, meanwhile, must be prepared to accept whichever teacher and subject their moveable timetables serve up. Neither scenario is ideal, and both lead to unwanted disruptions for which there appears to be no quick-fix cure.

Across the board, the problem is a combination of job-for-life contracts, teacher burnout syndrome, strapped-for-cash local authorities, and no established culture of working with substitute teachers. And it's likely to get worse before it gets better, according to Jens Stiller, a spokesman for Berlin's department of education.

"Three percent of our teachers are on long-term sick leave," he said. "And since the average age of our workforce is 49, we are dealing with a lot of staff sickness. What we need here is a greater balance between old and young teachers."

Testing new waters

Given that no such balance can be injected into the existing system, the educational powers that be have launched a trial scheme whereby a number of schools budget for their own needs.

"Each school is allocated a certain budget from which they can employ substitute teachers as required," Stiller said. "They use retired teachers, those on maternity leave or those in the final stages of their teacher training."

It's a novel scheme, which Stiller said was working well, but it remains to be seen how well it would fare were it expanded to schools across the city. "There are only so many trained teachers out there available to work as substitute staff, and they might be too few to go around," he pointed out.

"Guaranteed teaching"

Earlier this year, the state of Hesse launched an initiative to tackle that very problem. Under its "guaranteed-teaching" scheme, it has created pools of substitute staff -- only in this instance, teaching qualifications and experience are not a prerequisite.

Nonetheless, Christian Boergen of Hesse's department of education said it was an improvement over the days when cut classes were a run-of-the-mill occurrence.

"It's good for teachers to know someone will cover for them when they are sick, and for parents to know their children won't be walking the streets because a class has been cancelled," he said.

The project has been widely criticized for its randomness -- not least by the regional teaching union, GEW Hesse. Hartwig Schröder, the head of the union's legal department, is horrified by the department of education's willingness to use retired teachers, students and housewives to take over at the blackboard.

"The majority of those employed as part of the guaranteed-teaching project do not have the qualifications which used to be required to be able to teach," he said. "It is a slap in the face for the profession."

Unlike the test project in Berlin, guaranteed teaching has not been restricted to a handful of schools, but has already been put into practice across the state.

Schröder said it would ultimately do more harm than good.

"What we need is simple: more teachers, smaller class sizes, less stress and, consequently, a greater sense of satisfaction among the teachers. And what we don't need is this kind of patchwork solution.