Catechist in Berlin

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In Berlin (since 1948 in West Berlin and since 1990 in the unified federal state of Berlin ), catechists make up the majority of religious teachers for Protestant and Roman Catholic religious instruction within the framework of the Berlin school model . With a Roman Catholic church in the diaspora , the evangelical catechists are by far the largest group among them. (→ See also the special position of religious education in Berlin .)

General framework

The Evangelical Church Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (EKBO for short) is responsible for the Protestant catechists ; the Archdiocese of Berlin is responsible for the Roman Catholic catechists . Since the Roman Catholic Church in Berlin is in the diaspora or minority in terms of the number of its members , the number of its religion teachers and the number of participants in the religious education it offers is correspondingly lower.

The salaries of the catechists are financed 90 percent by the Berlin Senate and 10 percent by the Protestant regional church or the archbishopric.

The vast majority in Berlin have always been women who have been teaching religion as a school subject on the basis of training as a catechist .

Religious instruction in Berlin is a voluntary subject for which entire class groups rarely register. In order to achieve the specified group sizes, the catechists usually have to group students from several classes into one group. At the same time, the other students in this class (es) have to be looked after in other ways, which is why the school administrators often tend to schedule religious instruction for the first or last hours of a school day (“marginal hours”).

In view of the overall decline in the number of participants for years, catechists with a full post usually have to teach religion in two or even more schools in order to fulfill their work target.

Evangelical catechists

education

The training to become a Protestant catechist in Berlin included:

  • C-Catechist : One-year evening class, C-exam followed by a three-month school internship
  • B-Catechist : Following the C-exam, a further two years of day school training or two and a half years of part-time training, B-exam - essential for the issuance of the vocational training or teaching qualification and permanent employment.
  • A-catechist : Two years after working as a B-catechist, it was possible to register for the A-course. This further training lasted three years and was part-time, i.e. H. with a ¾-Deputat at your “own” school, you received further training during the week in evening seminars and one day seminar each and specialized in certain school branches and / or as a mentor. (This further training offer has been used by most of the catechists since the 1980s. In addition to the higher qualification, it also promised a remuneration similar to the starting salary of a university-trained "teacher with a scientific subject" within a further six years after the appropriate promotion.)

The only comparable training to become a Protestant parish catechist in the GDR was recognized by the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg or today's EKBO as not yet sufficient for school service in West Berlin or in the united state of Berlin, but only allowed the C to be skipped Training .

A discontinued model

The Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia no longer trains catechists. The last exam tests for A-catechists were taken in early 2006 - so that the training program is final for ev catechists in Berlin. Expired . It will now by the ten semesters comprehensive technical college to possibly also qualified religious teachers replaced. Overall, this training is broader, i. H. Their focus is no longer exclusively on religious instruction in school and, at the end of the day, no longer enables an A-catechist to be promoted to probation, even after remuneration. However, in the first few years, religious educators with a university degree were only offered a few, and for a few years even no, permanent positions as teachers for religious education - later, however, from around 2015, they were offered permanent positions, but this offer was only found in very rare cases With love, the religious educators preferred to use the other possibilities of their qualifications to choose a career instead.

In view of the “austerity measures” that became necessary on all sides at the end of the 1990s, this means a. also the abandonment of the option of part-time training, which after completion guaranteed secure acceptance into a church employment relationship. In particular, the close connection between a training that is not officially recognized per se and the Protestant Church as the only possible employer threatened to pose an existential problem for the already trained Protestant catechists. In Berlin in particular, the Evangelical Church, in a peculiar association with the Berlin Senate, seemed to be keen to be able to dismiss them all in the near future.

But despite (or perhaps because of) the referendum of 2009, which was voted negatively in the interests of the Pro Reli applicants, to establish an elective subject area of ethics and religion, the situation of the still active evangelical catechists has eased considerably again. See notification of April 26, 2009 , there is more and more cooperation with teachers of ethics classes who declare a need for “experts” in matters of religion. In addition, the number of evangelical catechists is falling purely due to age: while before reunification there were more than 1,000 for West Berlin alone , in 2004 it was 648 to almost 565 permanent positions for the whole of Berlin and only 592 to 493 for the 2009/10 school year Positions. (Last status for school year 2017/18: 426 posts, including the religious educators trained at an evangelical college as “successors” of the catechists.) At the same time, between 2004 and 2010 the number of teachers in the state school service, the evangelical religious instruction, fell from 137 to 67. (Last status for school year 2017/18: 10 posts). In the same period, the number of participants in Protestant religious education in Berlin fell from a good 89,000 to almost 82,000 students, which, however, only reduced their share of the also falling total number of students from 26.3 percent to 25.5 percent. (Last status for school year 2017/18 with 77,635 participants with 22.10 percent)

The percentage of the number of participants, which is gradually declining more and more, compared to the total number of students, which has been rising again for several years, contrasts with the even more drastic ratio of 839 to the only 498 Berlin schools in the 2017/18 school year. In the beginning it was the extreme demographic change in Berlin that caused schools to close, but since 2015 more and more new schools have been built. Since then it has been the rapidly increasing number of catechists who are retiring, which is why it is now more and more often that Protestant religious instruction can (no longer) be given in Berlin schools, although it would be desired there.

Background (as of 2015)

The vehement commitment of Wolfgang Huber as Berlin bishop (1994–2009) and EKD council chairman (2003–2009) for an “ elective subject religion” aimed not least at the assumption of religious education by teachers with faculties or with religion as a minor thus enabling the EKBO to “save” the 10 percent share of the salaries of the catechists while maintaining their professional supervision . Looking for a conversation with the catechists of the Evangelical Church, who have mainly been active since 1948 and, if his request is successful, discussing their professional alternatives or even further training or re-qualification measures, was out of the question for him until the end. Only after the failure of the referendum initiated by Pro Reli and shortly before his retirement did he invite the Berlin catechists in summer 2009 to thank them for their support for the referendum. The Berlin Senate , ruled by an SPD - PDS coalition at the time , could not and did not want to finance an elective subject that would involve all pupils and demand new state teaching positions, despite its "promised" increased value education.

This seemingly paradoxical consensus of interests between the Senate and the Protestant official church has since been owed to rigid group sizes that are enforced for the respective school year regardless of pedagogical considerations with regard to the class composition or grade levels. At the same time, the teaching obligation of the catechists was increased by two hours in 2005 and by a further hour from August 2007, so that, in view of the ever lower number of registrations for religious education, fewer religious teachers are necessary and the now increasingly increasing postponement of religious education in the "fringe hours" of the subject hardly makes it more attractive.

  • News from November 6, 2004 : The Synod of the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia had discussed to cut 200 of the 565 religious teaching positions by 2008 and to cut the salaries of the remaining teachers - this against the background that already half a year previously an increase in the teaching obligation by one hour each without wage compensation from 2004/2005 and 2005/2006 (i.e. by a total of two hours) was enforced, which amounted to a wage cut of approx. 8½ percent.
  • Announcement from February 15, 2005 : The collective bargaining parties of the EKBO had agreed on a respite until July 2007, i. H. After the employee representatives agreed to a 5% salary cut for a limited period until then, the employer assured that there would be no redundancies for operational reasons during this period and that the second increase in hours would be suspended. However, this “breathing space” was flanked by the discussions about the establishment of a subject LER without an equal RU parallel offer, which flickered again at ever shorter intervals in the Berlin Senate and the opposition parties. The SPD-Left, PDS and Greens spoke out in favor of such an offer, the CDU and FDP wanted religious education to continue to be an alternative to LER or philosophy / ethics classes.
  • Announcement of March 23, 2006 : The Berlin Senate had decided to install a new ethics lesson for all pupils in lower secondary level, which was compulsory for all pupils in 7th grade from the 2006/2007 school year. Religious instruction, on the other hand, should still only be able to be given as a voluntary offer - that de facto meant the gradual displacement of religious instruction from this school level. At the same time, the EKBO had terminated the collective wage agreement for all church employees, which after July 2007 resulted in a further deterioration in working conditions for any newly hired catechists or religious educators with a university degree .
  • On July 31, 2007 , the reduction in salaries for catechists made in 2005 was withdrawn and their teaching allowance increased again by one hour.
  • Announcement from April 26, 2009 : According to the two Christian churches, the school law discrepancy between ethics and religious education has since led to an approx. 25 percent decrease in the number of participants in religious education in the previously affected classes (7, 8 and 9) of lower secondary level . After the rejection of a constitutional complaint and the decision by the Federal Constitutional Court on March 15, 2007 , according to which compulsory ethics lessons do not violate parents or students in their fundamental rights (1 BvR 2780/06), the association "Pro Reli eV", founded in March 2007, advocated to bring about a referendum for an elective subject religion that is equivalent to ethics lessons. The first hurdle of a referendum required for this was successfully cleared in January 2009, but the referendum on April 26, 2009 was to the disadvantage of the applicants. ( For the referendum, see also → Pro Reli )
    The status quo was and will remain , ie ethics lessons are compulsory for all students from the 7th grade onwards, while religion lessons from the 1st grade onwards can only be chosen as a voluntary additional subject.
  • Announcement as of November 23, 2011 : Senate representatives from both parties and in particular the Governing Mayor Klaus Wowereit had repeatedly emphasized before the ballot for the referendum that they wanted to work for improved opportunities for cooperation between teachers of ethics and religious education. So far, the SPD-CDU coalition, which has been in power since November 23, 2011 under the renewed leadership of Wowereits, has not contradicted this.
  • News from October 1, 2015 : A financing agreement for religious education was signed between the Berlin Senate and the two churches, which comes into force on January 1, 2016. Accordingly, from 2016 onwards, the allocation amount that has been “frozen” since 2005 for refinancing religious education by the Senate will again be adjusted to the actual classification of the teachers to be financed. This financing agreement means a great financial relief for the EKBO as well as a relief for the evangelical catechists, who without this financing agreement had to reckon with reduced salaries and / and overtime and / or other restrictions in the foreseeable future.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b The link to the ekbo Statistical Report 2006 website is no longer available. It recorded the number of RU participants (p. 67) and number of religious teachers (p. 71) as a PDF file from 2004
  2. ↑ a b The link to the ekbo Statistical Report 2009 website is no longer available. It recorded the number of RU participants from 2007 (p. 80) and the number of religious teachers (p. 83) as a PDF file
  3. ↑ a b c d Evangelical Church Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia : Statistics of Evangelical Religious Education in the EKBO - School Year 2017/2018 , On the number of RU participants from 2004 to 2017/18 (p. 5) and number of religious teachers (p. 11) as well as the number of schools in Berlin with religious education (p. 6), as of January 1, 2018, online at ekbo.de
  4. ↑ The link to the website with information from the EKBO on the decreasing number of participants in the RU in Berlin's lower secondary level can no longer be accessed.
  5. ↑ 1 BvR 2780/06
  6. ^ Bishop Dröge and Archbishop Koch sign financing agreement for religious education. ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) In: ekbo.de , EKBO press release from October 1, 2015