I work in social care and have been told that my degree that I Completed in Ireland does not qualify me to receive a higher payment class. I know this cant always be the case that Germany only recognises german degrees.

by GeoffH17

11 comments

  1. Check Anabin to see if your degree and university is there. They also have some classifications and details of how they view your degree.

  2. Social Care within a house for elderly or which area? Can you give specifics about your degree and which area of Germany you live in?

  3. Bachelor degree and put in SuE S2? That is the lowest group in the salary scheme SuE (S2 to S18).
    Unbelievable.

  6. To be honest you should get out of öffentlichen Dienst, their payscale is stupid and their categorizing rules are so stupid.

    I work there before so no need to downvote.

  7. One of the tragedies of ÖD. I would love to give back to my country by working directly for it, but I’d be hit with a *severe* pay cut because I don’t have the right degree. If that’s indicative of the work environment, I dodged a bullet, I guess.

  8. Hey,
    I know a social worker coming from Austria to Germany and having to do an additional year here because Social Work degrees (which your type of Pädagogik could be) must be state approved. I have other friends who had “close enough” German degrees and they struggle to find jobs whereas those with a Social Work degree don’t.
    My tip: find a university and ask them what you would need for the German degree. There will be law curses at least. Try to get your own “Anerkennung” it takes a while but university is free and it can really help with your prospects if you want to stay in Germany for longer. You won’t have to do all the courses just a few… I feel like there was a little bit more to it but the universities will have someone to advise you.

  9. There are many different employers (Träger) for the same kind of job out there with wildly different rules. Generally, public employers tend to be stricter than church-affiliated or other employers which are a bit more flexible.
    Ask around / apply at different facilities.

    Some jobs need a German degree (staatliche Anerkennung), very often your Irish courses can be recognized when repeating your studies/do similar ones. You can inquire at the respective schools with your transcript of records and maybe the module descriptions.

    I’m not in the field but my wife is and she’s from abroad and working in child and youth support (KJH) which also falls into TVöD-SuE. To be fair she hadn’t had any specific degree, just educology and philology. Her first job with the city as employer allowed her only to work 39% max in S4 (even though they were desperately looking for more employees but the city’s rules are the city’s rules…). Nevertheless she had a reason to leave the apartment which was a huge first step. After a few months she got 70% with approximately S7/S8 level at a small e.V. daycare for elementary school kids. She then switched to a school as Erzieher in S8b, 70% employed by Diakonie and remote studies in parallel for social work/social pedagogy. Around 1/6 of the courses were recognized from previous studies and she was able to do the mandatory internship for staatliche Anerkennung during her normal work hours. She’s now working an S12 Sozialpädagoge job, 90% at Caritas. She could climb to higher salary groups but there were no jobs available that she liked at that time and she likes her current workplace a lot.

    So things are possible, sometimes with detours. Maybe something similar is possible for you, too?

  10. Be thorough with this. I got 2 different official evaluations of my degree in Germany, one lower than it was and the other actually equivalent.

  11. Sadly this is normal. I have a (German) friend who did his phd outside of Germany and when he applied for a postdoc position in Germany he was only offered a 1st year phd student salary because the years spend abroad for the phd were not recognised. And this is STEM where at the time they were desperate for postdocs. Needless to say, he didn’t take the job and instead got double the salary as a postdoc elsewhere in the EU. It sucks 🙁

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