Do Learning Assistants Get Paid

The left-wing parliamentary group in the House of Representatives wants to combat the shortage of teachers in Berlin – and has come up with some proposals for this.

The House of Representatives has long since taken its summer break, but work is in progress in room 109: Regina Kittler, education politician of the Left Group, speaks of an “emergency” and means the lack of teachers. She has drawn up around a dozen proposals to demonstrate that Berlin does not necessarily have to be civil servants to remedy the “emergency”.

Relieve

Around half of the teachers work part-time – many of them because they feel overwhelmed. Kittler, therefore, wants to ease the burden and in this way achieve that as many teachers as possible increase their number of hours again: “If everyone were to teach two hours more, that would add around 700 educators,” calculates the left-wing MP.

She sees an effective relief in the fact that learning assistants help correct classwork, for example. Learning assistants? Exactly: Kittler used the summer break for parliamentary research and uncovered a communication from 2006. In it, the former Senator for Education, Klaus Böger (SPD), on behalf of the House of Representatives, explained how Berlin could “clear the way for the learning assistant”. However, shortly thereafter, the SPD / CDU coalition became Red-Red, and the matter was forgotten. So now: everything at the beginning.

Kittler distributes Böger’s message in room 109, and there you can read what the tasks of the learning assistants could be: “Subject-related and interdisciplinary support and challenge” and “educational and organizational support”. And it also states which qualifications the potential learning assistant should have: a bachelor’s degree in a teaching degree.

That is a good thing because there are plenty of such graduates: Kittler reports that around half of the students who take up a teaching degree never make it to the master’s degree. Potential learning assistants could be sought among them. In addition, other professions are supposed to relieve the teachers – such as workshop foremen and laboratory technicians, which Berlin had abolished in the austerity years.

Remove hurdles

As an example of superfluous hurdles in the supply of teachers, Kittler cites the late handing out of master’s certificates, which annually prevents “100 to 200” teachers from starting their service at the beginning of the school year. In addition, teachers would be lost due to the decentralized castings: The process must be centralized, demands Kittler. Furthermore, there must finally be an online portal for applicants and easier recognition of foreign qualifications.

Pay better

“In the coalition, we agree that trainee lawyers have to be paid better,” Kittler promises. It is also a failure that they do not benefit from the focus allowance. And there must be more scholarships – not just for students who are switching from another degree to a master’s degree. In addition, the Left thinks that Berlin has to pay the employees, even more, to close the “justice gap” with the civil servants.