What went wrong
DIPSY-Lehrer has been running since 2005, when the system was probably fine. However, after 20 years, it's like a car that has never been MOT'd. At some point, small flaws can add up to create a major problem.
The system has a simple yet devastating flaw: it adds new teaching posts to its internal list year after year but fails to check whether these posts have actually been filled. It's like a faulty counter that just keeps running.
Every year, 80–100 phantom posts are added. After 20 years, that equates to 1,440 ghost teachers.
Who could have prevented this?
To be honest, almost everyone in the chain was involved.
The IT department could have regularly checked that the figures were still correct. A simple comparison with the actual number of teachers employed would have sufficed.
The administration should have become suspicious when the number of teachers increased year on year, despite widespread complaints about teacher shortages.
And what about the management level? After a few years, they should have asked why lessons were still being cancelled despite the rising number of teachers.
What that means for real people
While the system happily counted phantom teachers, real schoolchildren stood in front of empty classrooms. Headteachers had to improvise: reactivate retired colleagues, look for lateral entrants, cut hours.
This is particularly bitter because the budget was there - 110 to 120 million euros per year. But nobody realised that it could be spent on hiring real teachers.
No wonder parents and schools are slowly losing confidence. If the administration doesn't even know how many teachers it has, how is it supposed to plan the school day?
How to prevent this
The solution is actually simple.
Take a regular look. Once a year, someone should compare the figures with the actual situation. It's not rocket science.
In modern software development, tests are written before code is changed. Even small start-ups do this as standard today. However, If there's no time, there are no tests. But then the problem lies in the planning.
Build up your own IT teams. Rather than repeatedly bringing in external consultants who leave after three months, you should have people who really know the system.
My conclusion
This story is embarrassing, but it highlights an issue that is widespread in public administration: Outdated software that no one understands anymore, and processes that haven't been reviewed for years.
The good news is that it would be relatively easy to resolve. All that would be needed is a bit of common sense, a few modern IT practices and regular reality checks.
Schoolchildren would have full timetables again — they might initially have been happy about so many lessons being cancelled, but that would soon change.