The shortage of teachers will increase dramatically in the next few years. By 2025, there will be a shortage of at least 26,000 primary school teachers. The youngest children in particular are suffering massively from the lack of staff when it comes to taking their first steps into the world of knowledge. More and more pensioners, students and increasingly academics without any pedagogical training are now being sent to the teacher's desk, so-called lateral entrants. The teachers' association estimates that around 40,000 positions are already filled by them. Reading, writing, arithmetic - explained by people who have little or no knowledge of didactics. What does this mean for children, schools and education in Germany? Has politics failed? HR journalist Petra Boberg is starting a self-experiment and is teaching for several weeks at a primary school in Wiesbaden: a 1st grade and a 4th grade, in German, general knowledge and music. She herself studied German, but has no idea how to teach children to read and write. There is currently no preparation for the new job in Hesse. How does the teaching staff deal with the untrained teacher? How does she cope with everyday life at a school with children from difficult social backgrounds? How do the children react? Brigitte Kleine experiences the daily class struggle of the untrained teacher between flying paper balls, wobbling chairs and a desperate fight against the noise level. Fully trained primary school teachers can choose where they work in most federal states. In the rarest of cases, this is a so-called hotspot school. Precisely where the best teachers are needed, most of the lateral entrants and career changers teach. Education researchers speak of a dangerous deprofessionalization. What does this mean for educational equality? But untrained staff also save money: lateral entrants in particular usually have fixed-term employment contracts. But even fully trained primary school teachers in some federal states still earn less than high school teachers, even though they face the greatest educational challenges: inclusion, integration, growing social responsibilities. Against the background of these discussions, the film asks the question: what is a primary school child worth to us in Germany? The report is part of a large project that Hessischer Rundfunk is offering for the ARD theme week "The Future of Education". The story on Das Erste: http://bit.ly/StoryimErsten_Lehrermangel More about the theme week here: http://bit.ly/ARD-Themenwoche_2019 You can find more current content from Hessischer Rundfunk here: http://bit.ly/ARD--Mediathek #School #Education #TeacherLack