Educational research: Effective against the shortage of school principals
2025-07-07 High-quality school education requires good school leadership. But how can leaders be trained and recruited? The “Grundschule voraus” initiative has developed a continuing education programme that prepares teachers for school leadership roles – with initial success, as a Leuphana research team led by DFG Heisenberg Professor of Educational Management Marcus Pietsch has demonstrated in a recent study.
“Nationwide, almost half of all teachers see little room for professional development. Among teachers who participated in the leadership training programme offered by the initiative ‘Grundschule voraus – gemeinsam.gestalten.lernen’, the figure is only 5.9%.” This finding is contained in the interim report presented in July 2025 under the direction of Marcus Pietsch. He is providing scientific support for the pilot project together with Hariet Schellig and Jasmin Witthöft and is investigating which factors motivate teachers to take on leadership positions and what role qualifications play in this.
Just two years after the initiative was launched, the first results were published. “If you want to attract more people to school management positions, it is necessary for teachers to gain leadership experience at an early stage and to feel that they are effective in leadership and school development issues. Pre-service qualifications, such as the ‘Grundschule voraus’ programme, can help by reducing uncertainty and creating prospects for personal professional development,” explains Prof. Pietsch.
With the support of the opinion research institute forsa, among others, a survey representative of Germany was conducted: it questioned 932 teachers from general education schools and participants in the second year (2024) of the initiative’s qualification programme. The key findings of the study are: 1. Teachers show an interest in leadership, albeit with regional differences; 2. Development prospects motivate leadership; 3. Committed teachers take on responsibility early on; 4. Qualification programmes strengthen leadership readiness; 5. Teachers call for strong leadership for the school of tomorrow.
These interim results suggest that targeted support boosts teachers’ motivation and career prospects. Qualification programmes can therefore help to counteract the growing shortage of managers in the education system. “The findings so far are promising, but this is only a first step,” emphasises Pietsch. “Our longitudinal mixed-methods design allows us to track how professional development and leadership responsibilities actually change over several years. This gives us – for the first time in Germany – a solid basis for future decisions on the qualification and support of leaders in the education sector.”
Since 2023, the Hamburg initiative “Grundschule voraus – gemeinsam.gestalten.lernen” has been providing targeted support to teachers in their professional development and personal growth. The initiative is jointly funded by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation F.V.S., the Heraeus Education Foundation and the ZEIT STIFTUNG BUCERIUS. Its goal is to train committed teachers to become future-oriented school leaders and thereby promote educational equity for all children.