Bern fills teaching posts despite shortage of trained staff

All teaching positions in the canton of Bern have been filled for the new school year, but trained teachers remain in short supply, particularly in remote areas, SRF reports. Around 120,000 pupils will start the new school year in the canton this week.

Of the canton’s 6,600 primary school teachers, 600 have incomplete teacher training and 700 have no teacher training at all.

The shortage is especially difficult for rural schools and remote villages such as Zweisimmen in the Bernese Oberland. Lea Aellen and Nils Althaus will each teach eight lessons a week there as a part-time job. Aellen is about to begin training at a teacher-training college, while Althaus is preparing to study psychology and has no teacher-training qualification.

“I was thrown in at the deep end at first,” Althaus said. Support from more experienced teachers and the school management has helped him manage his classes, he said. He enjoys working with children and hopes to apply what he learns in his psychology studies in the classroom.

Aellen initially considered studying medicine after completing her school-leaving examinations. She now enjoys working in the classroom so much that she has decided to train as a teacher. The training will teach her the theory of lesson preparation and classroom management, which she can apply directly in her job, she said.

The primary school in Zweisimmen advertised the shared position in the spring, but no one applied, headteacher Pascal Minder said. Hiring the two young people is currently a benefit for both sides: they can earn money through part-time work, while the school can deploy them flexibly.

Minder said remote schools such as Zweisimmen struggled to find enough trained teachers and therefore relied on young people such as Aellen and Althaus. Ideally, they would later decide to train as teachers and remain at the school, he said.

Bern’s education director, Reto Müller, attributed the shortage partly to rising pupil numbers. The canton has reached a record high of 120,000 pupils this year, he said, making it difficult so far to recruit enough trained staff.

The canton requires teachers without diplomas to attend courses and forms mentoring teams in which less experienced teachers receive support from experienced colleagues. “It is not as if we are putting just anyone in front of classes,” Müller said.

Müller said the current situation was not intended to continue indefinitely. Once the canton has enough qualified teachers, it will also part ways with those who are unwilling to complete their training, he said.