Brandenburg slashes 345 teaching jobs despite funding hikes and rising class cancellations
Despite an increase in education funding, the state budget has cut 345 full-time teaching positions in Brandenburg. Teachers will now teach one additional hour per week, starting in the second half of the year, with reductions in other duties. This comes as nearly two million teaching hours were missed during the 2023/24 school year, accounting for roughly 14 percent of the total planned instruction time.
While this marks a slight improvement from the previous year, when 2.35 percent of classes were cancelled outright, Brandenburg has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels. In the 2018/19 school year, only 1.87 percent of lessons were cancelled without substitution. The extra teaching hour will not apply to schools facing exceptional challenges or public vocational schools, which may result in some schools operating with fewer permanent staff and surplus teachers being redeployed elsewhere, sparking protests.
Cottbus also saw frequent disruptions, with 3.21 percent of planned lessons cancelled, especially affecting special education schools (Förderschulen) with 10.77 percent of their scheduled hours lost. Substitute teachers covered about 1.7 million hours of the shortfall, while around 320,000 hours were cancelled without replacement, equivalent to roughly 2.24 percent of all planned lessons.
Starting the 2024/25 school year, schools are expected to better manage disruptions caused by staff shortages. An increased substitute teaching budget of €14.5 million will provide additional funds equivalent to 388 full-time positions for the first half of the year. The region with the most school disruptions is Frankfurt (Oder), where nearly 4 percent of planned lessons were cancelled, particularly affecting secondary schools. The Dahme-Spreewald district had the highest rate of lessons rescheduled due to staff shortages, with substitutes covering nearly 14 percent of all planned classes.
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