The Administrative Court of Münster has granted the urgent applications of teachers from Münster and the surrounding area who are fighting against their secondment to primary schools in the Ruhr region. The district government of Münster had justified the secondment on the grounds that there was a shortage of primary school teachers, particularly in the school districts of the cities of Gelsenkirchen, Bottrop and Recklinghausen. As can be seen from the decisions of the administrative court, the secondment order was not free of discretionary errors (Ref.: 5 L 554/24 and 5 L 619/24 of 6 August 2024). The primary schools could have named all primary school teachers at their school who were eligible for a secondment without jeopardising the teaching provision at their own school. A lottery procedure - as was practised in some cases - was not an appropriate procedure, especially as it was not documented which teachers were even included in the lottery procedure.

However, the administrative court clarified that, in principle, secondments of teaching staff are permissible in order to ensure an even supply of teaching staff in an administrative district. When making a discretionary decision, public interests such as ensuring the provision of lessons and the personal disadvantages for the seconded teachers must be weighed against each other.

Your contacts for questions relating to childcare and school law in our practice are the lawyers Dr Beate Schulte zu Sodingen, Franziska Wilke and Charlotte Blech. Contact persons for public service law are the lawyers Prof Dr Klaus Herrmann, Dr Stephan Berndt and lawyers Kristina Dörnenburg and Kristina Gottschalk, LL.M.oec