«There is no shortage of teachers»

A new building near Zurich's Hardbrücke. The umbrella organisation of Swiss teachers, the LCH, is located on the top floor and we are shown into a modern meeting room. Beat W. Zemp will be here any minute, we are told. The LCH President has a lot to do, these are the last weeks of his term of office. He is not wistful about this, he says as he enters the room a short time later. Hands are shaken and the conversation can begin.

Beat W. Zemp, you were Switzerland's top teacher for many years and therefore a role model for many colleagues. Is there a teacher who has made a big impression on you or influenced you?

That was my maths teacher at grammar school, barely older than us at the time. Young people of that age are in a difficult phase of development, but he still managed to reach us. He taught with an inner fire that gripped and motivated me.

Do you have any bad memories of your own school days?

Unfortunately, yes, I have a particularly negative memory of one primary school teacher who regularly beat us pupils, spreading fear and terror. In the 60s, this kind of thing was still socially tolerated. Today it would be unthinkable.

There were times when you wanted to be a conductor.

My music teacher at grammar school opened the door to the world of classical music for me. I completed my conducting diploma and founded a band.

And why did this career aspiration come to nothing?

The desire to study maths, geography and education and to become a secondary school teacher was probably fuelled by my enthusiasm for the aforementioned maths teacher. So for a long time I lived two lives, that of a student and teacher and that of a musician and bandleader.

What is the most important thing that your parents gave you?

Confidence in my own abilities. My father in particular gave me a lot of support. For example, he drove me to my band's rehearsal venue almost every day for a year. My mum mainly looked at my performance at school. She always put a bit of pressure on me, which is probably one of the reasons why I achieved top marks from primary school to university.

Impressive.

But not always helpful for a teacher who also has to understand young people who don't always immediately grasp mathematical formulae. But a good teacher is also able to arouse the interest of those children for whom their subject is not number one on the hit list. This has always been my goal.

How did you become involved in professional politics?

This is thanks to a former colleague. He asked me if I would like to get involved in the Baselland Teachers' Association. At that time, I realised that teaching conditions were significantly influenced by politics, so I wanted to get involved and eventually took over the vice presidency of this association.

In 1989, you were elected President of the newly founded umbrella organisation for teachers in Switzerland, the LCH. What goals had you set yourself?

By bringing together teachers' associations at all levels, the LCH was to develop the necessary strength and professionalism to actively shape the constant change in the education system. Another goal was the professionalisation of communication. We needed an association that would become the mouthpiece of the teaching profession. A large part of my work as President of the LCH still involves media work today. Hardly a day goes by without a statement in the media.

«WhatsApp will be allowed to advertise in future. That is a
No-go at school.»

Today, the LCH has 53,000 members and includes all level and professional associations from kindergarten to universities, making it the largest association of teachers in Switzerland. Were there also goals where you encountered resistance, where you reached your limits?

Of course, I have learnt more than once that you need a lot of patience when it comes to education policy . For example, we have still not succeeded in reducing the proliferation of different qualifications for primary school teachers to a tolerable level. The training of primary school teachers must also be raised from Bachelor's to Master's level in order to be able to respond to the greatly increased demands placed on teachers. Switzerland is at the bottom of the league in Europe when it comes to the length of primary teacher training programmes. That really annoys me.

What shortcomings still need to be remedied?

We are simply not succeeding in decoupling educational careers from the socio-economic status of the parental home and ensuring greater equality of opportunity.

What needs to be done?

The state must set itself the task of expanding early education and supplementary school care. Other countries, for example, have drawn up development plans for the «0 to 4 years» age group. Primary schools are not always able to make up for the shortfalls that some children from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds experience in the first years of life. In this country, if you look at a family's level of education and income, you can tell with a high degree of probability whether the child will go on to do A-levels or not.

«There will never be a head teacher
and say: Sorry, we haven't found a teacher.
found a teacher.»

There are numerous topics on which you have made public statements and recommendations in recent years. One of them was not to use WhatsApp as a class chat.

Many people criticised me at the beginning. They said it was unrealistic. In the meantime, all the cantonal data protection authorities have switched to our line and agreed with us. The short message service collects data and passes it on to Facebook. In addition, the five-year blocking period during which WhatsApp was not allowed to place adverts has expired. This will be possible in future. A no-go for the school.

What would be the alternatives?

First of all, a nationwide ban on WhatsApp in schools is not enforceable because no state authority could impose such a ban. We have cantonal and municipal sovereignty over public schools. Nevertheless, we need a mass messaging service for our schools that fulfils the new data protection regulations. It is important that the data is really protected , that the servers are in Switzerland and that the European General Data Protection Regulation is complied with. All these things must be properly regulated. There are already good alternatives and new ones are being added all the time.

Speaking of advertising in schools. More and more companies are entering the classroom with teaching materials in order to influence the subject matter.

In principle, it is a good thing when a company wants to take responsibility in its sector and make money available for education in addition to taxes. The question is simply how this is done, because the independence of teaching and research is the central asset that needs to be protected. This also applies to primary schools. It becomes particularly critical when teaching materials that supplement lessons are distributed to pupils with company logos and product advertising. For this reason, the LCH has issued a charter with restrictive guidelines for school sponsorship. Numerous companies, civil society organisations and foundations have already signed these.

Let's talk about the increasing shortage of teachers. The number of pupils in primary schools will rise to a historic high of 1.04 million by 2025. This means that around 2000 additional teachers will be needed. At the same time, many teachers from baby boomers will retire.

There is no shortage of teachers.

Excuse me?

It must not exist at all. All positions must always be filled when school starts. There will never be a situation in which a headteacher stands in front of a class and says: Sorry, we haven't found a teacher, you can go home. We are therefore not talking about a quantitative but a qualitative shortage of teachers. Teachers today are increasingly having to teach at a different level or in a different subject or even hire people who have no pedagogical training at all. As an emergency measure , for example, some cantons employ students in classes before they have completed their studies or bring back teachers who have already retired .

What are the causes?

The main reasons for this are the inadequate working and employment conditions and the lack of career development. If conditions were better, more talented men and female career changers would be interested in the profession. The LCH is therefore calling for modern and reliable working conditions, especially for kindergarten teachers. Their salaries have not kept pace with the increased demands.

Couldn't the high workload also be a reason for the lack of qualified staff? According to studies, one in three teachers suffers from depression at least once a month, and just as many are at risk of burnout. Every fifth teacher quits their job within the first four years.

I know these figures and they should give us food for thought. In Switzerland, we have the highest annual working hours in the whole of Europe. If we were to reduce our workload to the usual level in Western Europe, we would have to give three to four fewer lessons per week. This means that the health risks are to a certain extent home-made.

Nevertheless, this problem cannot be delegated back to each individual employee.

Definitely! We are doing a lot in this regard. With a school building check and CO2 measuring devices for classrooms, we want to sensitise schools to ensure a healthier indoor climate. The Federal Office of Public Health has published a study on this topic. The indoor climate of 100 school buildings was examined by occupational health experts. The aim was to comply with the CO2 limit values through optimal ventilation behaviour. However, depending on the structural conditions, this may not even be possible during lessons. The space, light and noise conditions are also critical in some places. The school workplace can therefore make you ill over time.

«Teachers today are not automatically authority figures.
Authority has to be earned
earned - and that's a good thing.»

But teachers also complain about the increasing workload.

Teachers in German-speaking Switzerland work an average of 13 per cent unpaid overtime without being able to compensate for it. Depending on the school level, teachers work between 2086 and 2222 hours per year in a 100 per cent position instead of the cantonal reference working time of 1916 hours. This was the result of a scientific survey of working hours in which 11,000 teachers in German-speaking Switzerland took part.

However, this representative study also shows that the number of overtime hours has fallen by 40 per cent since the last survey ten years ago.

That is correct. However, this finding is deceptive: many teachers reduce their full-time workload in order to avoid overwork. But this strategy works for very few of them: The lower the workload, the more overtime is worked. Those who are employed less than 50 per cent work 22 to 25 per cent too much unpaid. It is the high ethical demands on one's own teaching that lead to a disproportionate amount of work and the many additional activities that cannot be performed on a pro rata basis, such as attending conventions, parents' meetings or further training courses.

How does the LCH support teachers who feel burnt out, who can no longer cope?

There are private help centres and occupational health facilities. But these are often fully booked. Other colleagues don't even make use of these services. The motto is: if I admit that I have burnout as a teacher, it looks as if I'm teaching badly and can no longer cope with the demands. That is why we have taken this topic out of the taboo area and launched an awareness-raising campaign for the health of teachers in the workplace. The reduction in unpaid overtime is an initial success of our campaign.

How do teachers experience the general loss of authority that other professional groups such as doctors or priests are also experiencing?

The young teachers who come into schools today no longer aspire to be an authority figure, as was the case in the past. Today, authority no longer lies in the role - you have to work for it and that's a good thing.

How do you do that?

By being authentic in front of the class. Each individual teacher shapes the image of the entire profession.

But we all know the Black Peter game: parents say about teachers that they are no longer educators who take a holistic view of the child. And teachers complain that education no longer takes place at home and that parents delegate everything to the school.

Blaming each other won't get us anywhere. Instead, teachers today need to come together as a team and establish clear rules of behaviour that they then implement consistently. The lone wolf no longer has a chance . Many schools have gone down this path and drawn up school mission statements, rules of behaviour and position papers on a wide range of educational problems. This provides security. Of course, the same also applies to parents. I am an advocate of parental involvement. As a professional partner, the school is happy to have a parents' council as a point of contact. For example, to negotiate rules and then enforce them together.

What do you want from the parents?

I have two requests, one is for the parents: If you have problems at school, contact the teacher concerned first before going to the head teacher or even the lawyer. The vast majority of parents do this well and correctly. I'm talking about the 5 to 10 per cent of unruly mothers or fathers who either don't look after their children at all or overprotect them.

And the second wish?

The education directorates should set up ombudsman offices for parents. It would be important for parents who cannot get their concerns heard by the school to have an office that can settle disputes at the lowest possible level before they escalate further.

Beat W. Zemp on ...

... a ban on mobile phones in schools
I am against a ban, but in favour of clear rules on mobile phone use.
... a school without homework
I am in favour of integrating homework into the school day, for example thanks to a supervised homework lesson at the end of the school day. That would cost money, but it would be money well spent, as the children who don't get any help at home would benefit greatly from it.
... the standardised school
I am not in favour of the one-size-fits-all school. I am also against selecting too early; but at some point the time will come when you have to strengthen the strengths and not just teach the weaknesses.
... a later start to school
Starting school later would make medical sense, especially for teenagers, but is hardly feasible. Do you want to add the missed lessons in the afternoon? Schedule them on the free Wednesday afternoon or even shorten the breaks? There is a lot of support for this
There is no majority in favour of this among pupils and parents, but also among training companies.
... a higher Gymi quota
Above all, I am in favour of more fairness: in Thurgau and Glarus, only
13 per cent of a year group have a baccalaureate, whereas in Basel and Geneva it is over 30 per cent. If you assume that intelligence is normally distributed, you have to ensure that everyone has a fair chance to complete a baccalaureate, regardless of where they live.
regardless of where they live.

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