Verdi: 40 percent of daycare specialists think of changing jobs-every fourth even considers getting out of the profession

DUSSELDORF. Despite their high level of motivation, daycare professionals are dissatisfied with their working conditions. Many employees threaten to migrate to other areas. This was the result of a survey of more than 19,000 professionals from all regions and all areas of the day care centers.

The United Services Union (ver.di) conducted this survey between May and June 2021 in cooperation with the Fulda University of Applied Sciences in German daycare centers and interviewed employees in crèches, kindergartens and after-school care centers. After an initial evaluation at the end of June, the entire evaluation is now available.

"The numbers are alarming and clearly show where the problems lie in day-care centers: the professionals are responsible for too many children. There is an urgent need for action to improve the situation,” emphasizes ver.di Deputy Chairwoman Christine Behle. The study shows how dissatisfied the employees are with their situation. In terms of their responsibility for the children, the clear majority complained that they were unable to address the children's problems or wishes due to time constraints. The dissatisfaction has a clear effect on the fluctuation in the day-care centers: almost 40 percent of the employees surveyed are thinking about changing jobs and around 25 percent about leaving the profession.

The situation in crèches and kindergartens is particularly problematic. Three quarters of the professionals surveyed in the area of ​​children under the age of three stated that they were responsible for at least five and up to twelve children at the same time. In everyday life with the children over the age of three, the employees were mostly responsible for 13 to 24 children. On average, three full-time employees are missing per daycare team in order to be able to work well. With around 57,600 day-care centers in Germany, there is a shortage of almost 173,000 skilled workers.

"Politics relies to a large extent on so-called lateral entrants to attract skilled workers"

Only every second skilled worker has time available for planning, preparation, development documentation and discussions with parents according to the duty roster. In practice, however, the majority of the professionals spend up to one hour on the specific preparation and follow-up work (50.2 percent of those surveyed) and up to one hour per day for discussions with parents (71.2 percent of those surveyed). This results in unpaid overtime work or at the expense of interacting with the children.

The survey also showed that, despite the blatant shortage of skilled workers in the entire field of social professions, training and further education are not given high priority. Although the majority of professionals are responsible for supervising interns, they do not have time for this activity and are rarely qualified to do so. 94 percent of the skilled workers surveyed also stated that their employers do not offer them any qualification measures that would enable them to advance through a higher professional qualification. This applies in particular to career changers without relevant professional training.

“Politics relies to a large extent on so-called lateral entrants in order to attract skilled workers. Without relevant training, however, these are not specialists who can perform qualified educational work, but are exploited as cheap labor and cannot meet the demand for high-quality educational work," criticizes Behle.

All of this makes it clear that significant improvements must be achieved in the collective bargaining round for social and educational services, which starts in January 2022, according to ver.di Vice Behle: "In addition to increasing wages, we will also work together for fight for better working conditions for the employees and thus for better conditions for children and parents.” News4teachers