Overview
- The Wiesbaden Landtag held a first reading of the bill on Wednesday proposing to cut the practical teacher traineeship from 21 months to 18 months so new teachers enter classrooms sooner.
- Under the draft law trainees would take on 14 to 16 hours of independent weekly teaching in the main phase instead of the current 12 hours and the modular training would be replaced by a continuous, practice-focused model.
- The Kultusministerium plans fewer instructor observation visits and a shift in assessment rules to concentrate more on school practice, changes the ministry calls a quality improvement.
- Teacher unions and opposition parties counter that surveys already show high trainee workloads, and they warn the proposed shortening and intensification will reduce preparation quality and raise stress for trainees.
- A planned October oral hearing will gather input from teacher associations, universities and school practitioners, and critics note the reform could cut staff costs with estimates of several hundred positions replaced by higher trainee teaching time.