Too few staff at Saxony's daycare centers

A study shows that there are not enough nursery teachers working in Saxony's daycare centers to provide optimal care. 84 percent of facilities have less than 60 percent of the recommended staff, according to a study on staffing ratios in daycare centers by the Bertelsmann Stiftung for 2024.

This puts Saxony and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania at the bottom of the league nationwide. Only one percent of daycare centers in Saxony meet the recommended staffing ratio.

According to the study, high-quality education, care and upbringing of children can only be achieved above this ratio. On average, Saxon daycare centers would have 51 percent of the personnel resources available that would be necessary for child-friendly education and care.

According to the analysis for 2024, only 13.7 percent of daycare centers nationwide have 100 percent staffing levels. Strikingly, the average figure in western Germany is 16.3 percent, compared to just 2 percent in eastern Germany including Berlin.

The staffing ratio is an indicator developed in cooperation with the Austrian Institute for Family Research at the University of Vienna. According to the study, it is intended to provide a differentiated picture of the staffing situation in daycare centres based on official child and youth welfare statistics.

Multiple factors determine staffing requirements

"Sufficient staffing capacities are essential when it comes to the time resources required to promote the individual education and development of each child," emphasizes the study team. Whether the available number of staff is appropriate for the children's needs depends, among other things, on the size of the daycare center, the age of the children in care and their particular educational requirements.

For the first time, the experts therefore not only compared the number of educators with the number of children in care and their age. Instead, they also took into account the number of children with a non-German mother tongue or a physical, mental or (impending) mental disability in a daycare center, because they require more intensive support.

According to the study, more than a quarter of the children in 13 percent of facilities in Saxony do not speak German at home. Almost half (49 percent) of the facilities are also attended by children with integration assistance.