Support for Equal Pay for International Teachers at WMIS

The mission of our school, like the Nelson Mandela School which is facing the same challenges in pay inequity, is to provide quality bilingual education to Berlin students that come from an English-speaking background. Many of these students are highly-mobile, such as the children of German State Department Employees and the like, who need English-language education so that they can seamlessly continue their learning at their family’s next posting. Thus, quality, native English-speaking teachers are essential to the mission and success of the schools as laid out by the Berlin Senate -- and by definition nearly all of these teachers will have received their education and training outside of Germany. Given the exceptional need for these teachers in particular, we feel pay parity is necessary to ensure that we can attract and retain the foreign-educated teachers needed. Without equity in salaries we fear we will lose the teaching staff, resulting in a failure of these schools.

On a more personal note, we would like to gratefully acknowledge the exceptional caliber of the teachers at our schools. Despite ongoing changes in management in both schools - thanks to the teachers,\ our students have largely been unscathed by challenges arising from this situation, and have continued to receive an excellent bilingual education. Given the common language in the school community, this stability has often been guided by the native-English speaking teachers who (like their German counterparts) continually go above and beyond their required teaching duties to enrich our children's education and social development.

As a bilingual school, we need international teachers. As an international community we simply don't accept that our non-native German teachers receive lesser pay for equal work. We thus, respectfully, request that you rectify this situation and elevate the pay of the foreign-educated teachers at the earliest possible opportunity, and retroactively to the start of the 2019/2020 school year.

We thank you for your attention and consideration in this matter.