German Teacher Shortage Deepens: Up to 10-Year Sick Leaves, 27,000 Vacancies, and a Looming Retirement Wave

How Germany’s Teacher Shortage Reached Breaking Point

Germany’s schools are starting the new academic year with a stark personnel gap. While the overall teaching workforce has expanded and states have introduced lateral entry programmes and financial incentives, many institutions still cannot staff their full timetable. The shortfall is particularly acute in STEM subjects (maths, IT, physics and chemistry) and in special-needs and arts teaching, with the standing conference of education ministers (KMK) estimating a nationwide deficit equivalent to around 27,000 fully trained teachers.

The strain is uneven. Brandenburg’s education minister, Gordon Hoffmann, warned in June that the state may no longer be able to guarantee full lesson hours in rural areas and for subjects such as biology and chemistry. In North Rhine-Westphalia, despite having more than 166,000 teaching posts, over 7,770 remained unfilled. These regional bottlenecks are compounded by a hidden drain: long-term sickness absence.

Berlin exemplifies the problem. According to the Senate Department for Education, 380 teachers have been on sick leave for at least a year. Of those, 225 are tenured civil servants and 155 are contract staff. The figures, released in response to a parliamentary question from BSW deputy Alexander King, show that 18 civil-service teachers have been absent for a decade or more, while five contract teachers have been sick for over ten years. Primary schools are hardest hit, with 98 long-term absentees.

Nationally, the picture is fragmented because each federal state collects and publishes sickness data differently. Hesse reports that 225 of its roughly 67,000 teachers have been ill for over a year, 16 for more than five years. In North Rhine-Westphalia, teachers were absent on 8.43% of working days in 2025, higher than the state administration average, with Hauptschulen (lower secondary schools) seeing a rate of 9.83%. Meanwhile, demographic arithmetic is tightening the noose: 35.4% of general-school teachers are already aged 50 or over, and student numbers are projected to rise from 11.2 million in 2024 to almost 11.8 million by 2032 before slowly declining.

Behind the Numbers: Regional Disparities, Sick Leave and Demographics

What the Long-Term Sick Leave Figures Expose

The Berlin data make plain that teacher absence is not just a short-term operational headache but a structural waste of permanent posts. A teacher absent for ten years still occupies a budgeted position, blocking replacement hires because civil-service law and fixed-term contract regulations make dismissals difficult. Alexander King, the MP who requested the data, argues that understaffing itself creates a vicious cycle: heavier workloads on serving teachers raise the risk of burnout and extended sick leave. The high rates in Berlin primary schools suggest the problem is concentrated where classroom demands are most intense and support structures thinnest.

A Patchwork of Data Hides the National Picture

No federal tally exists for teachers who have been sick for a year or more. States define ‘long-term illness’ differently — some start counting after 30 days, others after six weeks — and they report data in incompatible categories. This opacity prevents an honest national discussion about how many teaching posts are effectively blocked and what that costs the system. The known numbers, however, point to several hundred cases across the country, and the education ministers’ conference acknowledges that even 27,000 vacancies underestimate the real deficit because they count full-time equivalents, not the replacements needed while a permanent holder is ill.

Regional Disparities Turn a Problem into a Crisis

Brandenburg’s warning that it may not sustain full timetables signals a breaking point for rural and eastern states already struggling to attract young professionals. The shortage of biology and chemistry teachers there highlights how the STEM gap skews even more sharply outside cities. Meanwhile, North Rhine-Westphalia’s 7,770 unfilled posts — despite being Germany’s most populous state — show that money alone does not solve the problem; the state has expanded its teaching workforce to 166,000-plus yet still cannot fill classrooms. The imbalance suggests that without targeted incentives for teachers to work in undesirable locations, the crisis will deepen in precisely those areas where alternative education options are scarcest.

Demographic Double Whammy

The retirement wave is already visible: more than a third of teachers are over 50, and the ten-year gap between a teacher starting training and entering the classroom means the system cannot respond quickly. Even if recruitment were boosted today, the pipeline lag coincides with a 5.3% rise in student numbers by 2032. After that, falling birth rates will eventually ease pressure, but for the next decade the education system must absorb a larger cohort of pupils with a shrinking and increasingly exhausted workforce. This mismatch risks a prolonged decline in classroom quality unless states fundamentally rethink how teaching time is organised, including the role of teaching assistants and digital delivery.

Where Education Ministries and Schools Go from Here

• For state education ministries: Free up blocked posts by reforming sick-leave and civil-service rules that treat positions as permanently filled even when an incumbent has been absent for years. Without this, the 27,000-post deficit is artificial and resources are locked away.
• Target STEM and special education recruitment immediately: Brandenburg’s inability to cover biology and chemistry lessons is a preview of what awaits other regions. Incentives for these subjects — especially in rural and eastern areas — must shift from one-off bonuses to sustained salary premiums or housing support, mirroring successful schemes in other professions.
• Break the burnout cycle: Alexander King’s point about workload driving illness is borne out by North Rhine-Westphalia’s higher absence rate in Hauptschulen. Ministries should mandate maximum class sizes and guaranteed planning periods in the most pressured school types, not just aspirational guidelines.
• Prepare for the retirement crunch: With 35.4% of teachers over 50, every state needs a mid-career conversion programme that shortens the training route for graduates with a STEM or arts background to two years, rather than the standard four to five, to have replacements ready by the early 2030s.