Stuttgart (dpa / lsw) – The Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg, Winfried Kretschmann (Greens), discussed the extension of working hours for teachers in order to ensure better education in the state. “Maybe we have to work harder,” Kretschmann stressed Monday evening during a round table in the “Stuttgarter Zeitung”. For example, many teachers are women and many of them work part-time. “If they all worked an extra hour, an hour, I would have 1,000 more teachers which I urgently need,” said the Greens politician. “That could also be a problem.”
The school plays a central role in tackling the shortage of skilled labour, which is already a major problem in Baden-Württemberg. “We need to put more.” Depending on the type of school, teachers have slightly different weekly working hours. Pedagogues in elementary schools work 28 hours a week, in the Hauptschule and Realschule 27 hours, in the Gymnasium 25 hours. In elementary schools in particular, the proportion of female teachers is very high. In the South West, there are approximately 110,000 teachers in general schools.
GEW criticizes Kretschmann’s initiative as “totally wrong”
Monika Stein, head of the GEW education union, was outraged by Kretschmann’s proposal. “That’s totally untrue,” she told the German Press Agency. “Part-time teachers don’t work less because it’s fun to make less money, but because they need to work part-time to be able to do their job well.” It is also about reconciling family and work.
After two years of the pandemic with excessive stress, many teachers and school management are already at their wit’s end anyway, the trade unionist said. Now there are children and young people who have fled Ukraine. “If I increase the load further, many more teachers will be absent,” warned Stein. After all, the Prime Minister had acquired knowledge. “Congratulations, Herr Kretschmann, after eleven years in government, you now realize that you have a shortage of teachers.” The GEW has always predicted this.
Kretschmann considers “loss of prosperity” acceptable
During the round table of the “Stuttgarter Zeitung”, Kretschmann was convinced that the state cannot cushion all the economic consequences of the war in Ukraine for German consumers. “It will not go without restrictions.” Ten years ago, prosperity was significantly lower than it is today, and yet people weren’t living “on trees” back then. “You don’t have to pretend that a loss of material wealth is the same as something that promotes well-being.” Kretschmann added in view of increasing heating and petrol costs: “For people who are really hard hit because they have low incomes anyway, we have a well-developed welfare state that has to work there. .”
The Greens have come out against the “watering can benefits”. “Making gasoline cheaper for everyone now cannot be the solution,” Kretschmann said. “I really can’t get used to this.” Instead, we must invest in the energy transition, for example, to be less dependent on Russian gas.
Build wind turbines in two years
When it comes to the expansion of wind power, Kretschmann wants to pick up the pace even more than before. The time between planning and construction of a wind farm should be reduced to two years. “We are simply too slow. If we do not go faster, the energy transition will fail for lack of time”, warned the head of government. Until now, the realization of a wind farm takes about six to seven years.
Kretschmann had previously set itself the goal of at least halving the period. The coalition partner CDU is even more ambitious and wants to ensure that the wind farms can be realized within a year. EnBW board member Georg Stamatelopoulos was less optimistic. “It’s realistic to say we can halve that.” It is conceivable to be able to commission a wind farm after three years, he said during the discussion.
Kretschmann wants to put an apology “in draft”.
The Prime Minister said the pressure to quickly switch to renewables had doubled further in the wake of the war in Ukraine. “Every excuse is put on a hit.” Kretschmann hopes the conditions for faster expansion will be in place by the summer. He wanted “that it slides”. Even after ten years of green government, the Southwest still lags far behind in wind expansion. Three wind turbines were built in the first quarter, but 100 are needed per year, Kretschmann said.
He also called on the European Union to accept the so-called southern quota for the expansion of wind energy in Germany. The EU should not get caught up in “internal market radicalism” and remove all flexibility in member states. With the quota, the federal government wants to make the construction of new wind turbines more attractive in the southern Länder.
© dpa-infocom, dpa:220425-99-41898/4