Teaching is a rewarding and responsible profession. Teachers play an active role in the lives and educational biographies of children and young people, not merely passing on special knowledge but also fundamental cultural and democratic values. This achievement merits the support, recognition and appreciation of society as a whole. The manifold demands placed on teachers have undergone radical changes in recent years, creating new challenges. In a world of social upheaval and technological progress, the quality of schools and teaching can only be ensured through a process of continuous improvement and creativity.

These changing professional requirements are reflected in the programme’s overall foci for action as well as at the level of the individual projects. For the development of higher education institutions and to ensure that schools have a sufficient supply of well-trained teachers, the QLB has played an important role in strengthening both the visibility and the position of teacher education at universities. It has also sought to raise the attractiveness of the teaching profession and encourage more young people to enter the profession.

The funding scheme aimed thus at the sustainable improvement of teacher training, with a particular focus on its first qualification stage, that is the attainment of a teaching degree from a higher education institution. This includes improving the structure of ITP provision, that is cross-linking disciplines, didactics and educational sciences, and offering more special student support services, as well as explicit training in dealing with inclusion and diversity in the classroom. The programme also serves to bridge the theory-practice gap, that is to integrate the more theoretically (teaching degree) and the more practically oriented stages (preparatory service and continuous professional development) of teacher education in Germany.

The programme also responded to emerging issues identified during the first phase of funding. In 2018, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research has thus launched two additional funding strands, which focus on digitalisation in teacher training and teachers for vocational schools, respectively. As a result, the second phase of the programme funded 91 projects at 72 German higher education institutions (2019-2023). The Federal Ministry of Education and Research has allocated a budget of €500 million to the programme for a total period of ten years.

Besides, the 16 Länder, which are legally in charge of teacher education, have agreed to recognise teaching degrees and academic credits across the country, thus offering greater flexibility and mobility to students and prospective teachers. All measures developed under the programme are research-driven and data-based. In this way, teacher education has become a highly attractive partner for collaboration with other departments and faculties, and indeed an institutional asset for the university as a whole.

Remarkably, since its start in 2015 the programme has had a significant impact on the participating higher education institutions. This can be seen in the increased networking and cooperation efforts that are now extending beyond the regional boundaries. These efforts have been supported by the BMBF and the Project Management Agency of the German Aerospace Center (DLR Projektträger) through the organisation of hosting numerous conferences and workshops and the production of various publications. The final report of the evaluation of the programme shows that the QLB had helped the higher education institutions to manage the coordination requirements more effectively and to become more resilient through networking.

In addition to this, teacher education structures at higher education institutions have been consolidated, innovative teaching-learning formats have been developed and an additional 1,470 temporary positions have been created.

In order to make use of this potential beyond the funding period, the Standing Scientific Commission on Education Policy (Ständige Wissenschaftliche Kommission) and the Stifterverband published recommendations on how teacher education can be strengthened in the future. These positions are directly related to the QLB and the expertise of the funded higher education institutions. Some of the projects of the “Kompetenzzentren für digitales und digital gestütztes Unterrichten in Schule und Weiterbildung” (Competence Centres for Digital and Digitally Supported Teaching in Schools and Further Education), which are funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, also build on the findings of the QLB and expand the networks into the third phase of teacher training.

It is impressive to see how the projects have reflected on and shaped the transfer of the project outcomes to all phases of teacher education. This creates a solid basis for the sustainable impact of the programme on the various teacher training institutions involved. Above all, the QLB has revealed a previously unknown dynamic inherent in these vital change processes in teacher training in Germany.