Einschulung in der "Grundschule am Telegrafenberg" in Potsdam.

37,050 children will start school in Berlin on Saturday – and will see the place where they are supposed to learn to read and write for the first time.

Classes officially start on Monday. For this year, 1370 more first graders are registered at the approximately 800 schools in Berlin than a year ago. According to the education administration, this is the highest number since 2005.

More and more children from Ukrainian refugee families are now going to school here. Around 1,000 Ukrainian children are registered for the New Year. Before the summer holidays, around 5,000 students from Ukraine had already studied at schools in Berlin. Among them almost 3000 in so-called welcome classes.

The number of all students at general schools rose to 383,290, the education administration announced. A new record.

But many problems from the past school year persist in the new one. The corona pandemic is not over yet. At schools, the classrooms must continue to be aired regularly and voluntary testing for students and staff twice a week and once at the weekend will be retained. There is no mask requirement and distance rules.

In view of the rising energy costs and an impending gas shortage, energy should also be saved in the schools. It is planned to lower the room temperature in secondary schools. This does not apply to elementary schools. In order to save electricity costs, hybrid or online lessons should no longer take place.

Berlin also continues to struggle with the teacher shortage. In order to counteract this, in July the city was the last federal state to decide to return to civil service for teachers. Nevertheless, Education Senator Astrid-Sabine Busse (SPD) put the gap in vacancies at 875 permanent full-time positions a few days ago – with a total of more than 34,000 teachers. Many of the newly hired teachers are career changers without a teaching degree.

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SPD education expert Marcel Hopp assumes that the shortage of teachers will remain in the coming years. This could negatively affect some students. “I see with concern that the teaching load for students, especially in secondary schools, is high,” said Hopp.