Alarming conditions

Teachers had to work almost 467,000 hours of overtime

More and more often, compulsory school teachers in Upper Austria have to teach subjects for which they have not been trained.

(Bild: Markus Wenzel)

The shortage of teachers is increasingly becoming a threat to education policy, but also financially. According to a recent response to an inquiry, Upper Austria's compulsory school teachers worked almost 467,000 hours of overtime last school year. The consequences of this overload are sometimes dramatic.  

The fact that there are too few teachers at Upper Austria's compulsory schools is nothing new; most recently, the responsible Deputy Provincial Governor Christine Haberlander put the dilemma into figures following an oral question in the provincial parliament last November: Teachers have to work around 10,000 hours of overtime per week, the ÖVP politician said at the time.

Worrying details
The Greens now wanted to know the details and got to the bottom of the problem with a written question. Haberlander's answer is now available - and it has set alarm bells ringing. In the past school year, compulsory school teachers worked a total of 466,375 hours of overtime, which is 3.37 percent of all teaching hours.

Overtime more than doubled in four years
Teachers in the education regions of Linz and Mühlviertel are most affected, and it is mainly teachers at secondary schools who had to work overtime. According to Haberlander, the majority of these are not classic supply jobs, but (permanent) additional services. The continuous increase over the past few years is particularly striking: in 2019/20, "only" 212,485 hours of overtime had to be worked, whereas recently there were far more than twice as many.

The situation cannot remain like this. It would be politically irresponsible. Not only towards the teachers, but also the pupils and ultimately the parents.

Reinhard Ammer (Grüne), Landtagsabgeordneter

Excessive demands make people ill
For Reinhard Ammer, the Greens' education spokesperson, it is clear that initiatives already launched by state politicians are clearly not bearing fruit. In his view, what is needed now are "programs that have an immediate effect and are sustainable. A package is needed and the absolute will to finally change the situation." This is because the chronic overload has a domino effect: on the one hand, sick days are piling up: According to the response to the inquiry, more than 11,000 of the almost 14,000 teachers were off sick at least once in 2023/24.

Geography teacher teaches English
On the other hand, the shortage of teachers is also having an impact on the quality of teaching. This is because more and more teachers are having to teach subjects for which they are not trained. For example, there is a lack of teachers in German, English, mathematics, physical education and sport, computer science, physics and chemistry. According to Haberlander, a total of 989 full-time teachers would be needed in order to be able to exclude non-subject teaching.

Costs of more than 25 million euros
In addition to the educational policy dilemma, there is also the financial dilemma: the teacher overtime in the past school year cost the state around 25.7 million euros. However, these costs had "no negative impact on the overall personnel budget", explains Haberlander.

In any case, the situation cannot remain like this, judges Ammer. After all, the "flood of overtime would deter precisely those who are fundamentally interested in the teaching profession".