Quality of early childhood education: Staff shortages must not be an excuse

The public debate is often relentless. Talk shows, like the recent one with Lanz, and educational studies accuse daycare centers of failing in early childhood education and sending children to school with massive deficits – from holding a pen correctly to language skills. The accusation is: only childcare, no measurable education. The first reaction in the pedagogical teams is often a deeply understandable one: How are we supposed to manage this with this shortage of staff? We are already at our limit. This overload is real, it is overwhelming and demotivating.

But resting on this overload is the most dangerous trap. It is the direct path to resignation, to learned helplessness, which cements precisely the deficits that are being complained about from the outside. It robs us of our professional pride and our effectiveness. This article is an appeal against this resignation. It is a plea for the reclaiming of our pedagogical agency and shows that we are not helplessly at the mercy of the shortages. We can – and must – act.

Act instead of giving up. To break out of this learned helplessness and regain our own agency, a clear structure helps. It makes it possible to bundle the many daily opportunities for action and to see the forest for the trees again, instead of freezing in chaos. The abundance of concrete, immediately implementable strategies that give meaning and effectiveness back to everyday pedagogical work can be excellently divided into three logical core areas.

First, the foundation is needed: This is about how we even create the physical and temporal stage for education in the first place, in order to reduce the constant stress. Building on this, the pedagogy follows: This area describes how we fill the time on this newly created stage with smart, resource-saving methods to achieve maximum impact. Last but not least, there is professionalism: This core area highlights how we manage, reflect on, and communicate our work within the team and externally in order to permanently ensure quality and make our expertise visible.

The following detailed concepts are assigned to these three categories and show step by step how the transformation from mere administration to active shaping can be achieved.

Section 1: The Foundation – Restructuring Space, Time, and Group Dynamics

This section is about the hardware of pedagogy: creating an environment and group structure that makes learning possible in the first place and relieves the burden on educators instead of overwhelming them.

The Revolution of Space: From Supervisor to Learning Architect

The change doesn't begin with more staff, but with the most physical and powerful tool we possess: space. All too often, the group room is a noisy, open playground that forces our educators into the role of a supervisory police officer, rushing from one conflict to the next. Such a space produces stress, for both children and educators. The solution is to understand space as a third educator.

By dividing large rooms into clear, manageable themed zones using low shelves, carpets, or curtains – a quiet art studio here, a research corner there, a construction zone for a maximum of four children – the dynamics change immediately. The noise level decreases. The children play more intensely and with greater focus because they are not constantly distracted. The educator no longer has to manage 25 children simultaneously, but can deliberately sit down in one zone for ten minutes and truly engage in pedagogical work: observing, providing impulses, and promoting language development. Less material, presented in an inviting way, is often more effective than an overflowing, chaotic corner.

No More Accidental Learning: The Power of Targeted Workshops

Once the space is structured, time follows. The unstructured free play, where each child does what they want, is often merely childcare when there is a shortage of staff. It's a misconception to believe that children will simply get what they need. This is where the gap in fine motor skills development arises, which parents rightly complain about: the child who is motorically insecure will voluntarily avoid the art corner.

Here, we as a team can decide to replace chance with structure. Instead of three hours of unstructured free play, we are introducing 90 minutes of workshop time or mandatory studio time. The children rotate in fixed small groups through the zones (which we created in step 1). The child now has to go to the studio; they have to work with clay, beads, scissors, and pens. It's not a punishment, but a guarantee. This way, we ensure that every child receives systematic fine motor skills development – ​​and we can even prove it. Discretion is replaced by a planned curriculum that is binding for everyone.

The Tandem Model: Fewer Children, More Impact

The biggest obstacle to education is group size. A morning circle with 25 children is not language development; it's frontal instruction with massive information loss. Even if only two professionals are on duty, we can break through this reality. The tandem model is a radical but highly effective solution.

Instead of both professionals keeping an eye on 25 children, the team splits up: Professional A takes 12 children into an adjacent room (or a quiet corner) for 30 minutes and provides high-intensity support there – a dialogic picture book, a complex finger play, a real conversation. At the same time, Professional B provides conscious low-intensity care for the remaining 13 children (e.g., quiet puzzling, coloring mandalas). The next day, they switch. The gain is enormous: Every child receives concentrated, undivided attention. The professionals experience real pedagogical success instead of being overwhelmed by the entire group.

Section 2: Pedagogy – Smart Methods for Everyday Education

This section is about the software: the concrete pedagogical strategies that ensure that high-quality education takes place within the established structure (Section 1) by activating untapped potential.

There is no such thing as wasted time: Transforming routines into educational gold

One of the biggest, untapped resources in everyday childcare is routines. We tend to view getting dressed, washing hands, and eating together as caregiving burdens that prevent us from doing real educational work. The opposite is true: These moments are the most valuable one-on-one educational time we have – and they don't cost a single cent or an extra minute.

If, when getting ready to go outside, we don't just silently help, but consistently verbalize the process (First the right arm into the blue sleeve, now the zipper from bottom to top), we are actively promoting language development, body awareness, and teaching prepositions (pre-mathematics). If the caregiver sits at the table with the children during meals, instead of just supervising, and actively moderates the conversation (What color is your bell pepper? Is the yogurt cold or warm?), lunch becomes the richest vocabulary exercise of the day. Even handwashing is transformed from a hygiene chore into a mini-science experiment (Where does the foam disappear to?). This integration into everyday life massively enhances the value of these unpopular routine tasks and anchors education at the core of our actions.

The forgotten resource: Activating children as co-educators

In the face of constant staff shortages, caregivers tend to see themselves as the sole providers of knowledge and wear themselves out in the process. We forget the strongest resource we have in the room: the children themselves. Children often learn faster, more willingly, and more effectively from other children. We must consciously manage this peer-learning structure. Instead of one professional helping ten children get dressed, we can establish mentoring tandems in which a preschooler is officially responsible for a younger child. Instead of resolving every conflict themselves, we can assign expert roles: Lina, you are our 'puzzle expert' this week. Anyone who needs help asks you first. This not only fosters the social skills and self-confidence of the older children in an invaluable way, but it also directly relieves the burden on the staff. The group begins to regulate itself, and the educators change from being the all-rounder to a coach who accompanies these social processes.

The Language Island in Everyday Life: Weaving Language as a Common Thread

The biggest deficit that schools complain about is language. If we only consider language as an extra offering, it will always be the first thing to be cut when there is a staff shortage. Language must therefore be the common thread that runs through all structures. In addition to integration into routines, it needs established rituals.

A storytelling chair in the (small!) morning circle, where a child can tell a story undisturbed for one minute while everyone else has to listen, trains both the joy of speaking and listening skills at the same time. A consistent labeling campaign in the room (THE table, THE window) turns the environment into passive reading training. And a word of the week – a rich, sophisticated word like transparent instead of translucent – ​​that is actively used by the entire team, enhances the vocabulary of the whole group. In this way, language goes from being a problem to a natural, playful part of everyday life.

The Preschool Club: Combating Underchallenge in a Targeted Way

One of the biggest stress factors in heterogeneous groups are the preschoolers. They are often cognitively underchallenged, get bored during normal free play, and thus become disruptive – or they withdraw. At the same time, elementary schools (as lamented in the Lanz program) expect specific prerequisite skills that get lost in everyday life. The solution is to temporarily remove these children from the group to offer them targeted challenges.

By establishing a 45-minute "Club for the Older Children" or "School Explorers" once or twice a week, we create an exclusive learning environment. This isn't about arts and crafts, but about working on school-relevant topics: clapping out syllables (phonological awareness), comparing quantities (pre-mathematics), concentration exercises, and keeping a first preschool workbook. This gives the older children a sense of competence and importance, and their motivation increases. At the same time, the main group in the main room is noticeably relieved, as the most boisterous children are positively and intensively engaged.