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Learning with laptops (symbol picture): The grants for the countries vary widely
Photo: Marijan Murat / dpa
No computer, no printer, no data volume: a few weeks after the school closings in March, school policy became aware that some of the schoolchildren cannot take part in distance learning because of a lack of technical equipment.
At the end of April, the federal and state education ministers therefore decided that the digital pact should be topped up by 500 million euros.
Schools should receive the money to procure loan equipment for pupils in need.
So far, so good - the first laptops and tablets have already been bought and distributed to children and young people in some federal states in the new school year.
Nevertheless, there is criticism, and for once not that the whole thing is going far too slowly.
The SPD member of the Bundestag, Ernst Dieter Rossmann, complains that the way the laptop money is distributed between the federal states virtually contradicts the actual project - namely to help children and young people affected by poverty.
SPIEGEL:
Mr Rossmann, parents, teachers, and politicians all greet students in need with loan equipment.
What exactly is bothering you?
Ernst Dieter Rossmann:
Well thought is not necessarily well done.
The coalition committee's good intention to immediately equip socially disadvantaged schoolchildren with digital end devices has now almost been turned into its opposite, because the digital divide between the federal states is growing in an unacceptable way.
The so-called Matthew effect takes effect: whoever has is given.
Richer federal states, which are digitally better equipped anyway, are still preferred to poorer federal states that lack money for digitization.
SPIEGEL:
How did you get that?
Rossmann:
The 500 million euros that were made available should help ensure that all children and young people in Germany have the same chance of digital participation.
In the distribution of the funds, however, this socially equalizing approach was not taken into account in any way.
Instead, the so-called Königstein Key from 1949 applies, according to which one third of the funds are distributed according to the population of a federal state and two thirds according to the tax revenue.
It is not taken into account at all how many children and young people are affected by poverty in a particular federal state.
There are extreme differences.
The distribution of the funds is therefore dramatically unfair.
"The children in Bremen need a laptop just as badly as they do in Bavaria"
Ersnt Dieter Rossmann, SPD politician
SPIEGEL:
Can you prove that?
Rossmann:
Using the data from the Federal Employment Agency, I calculated how much money is available for the digital devices per student in need in each federal state.
In Bavaria, the proportion of children and adolescents under the age of 18 who live in a community of needs with a Hartz IV benefit is 6.2 percent, in Baden-Württemberg 8.1 percent, in Berlin 27 percent and in Bremen 31.6 percent.
If we now take a closer look and calculate how much laptop money is allocated to a needy child or adolescent from 6 to 18 years of age, i.e. about school age, I get 937 euros for Bavaria, but only 228 euros in Bremen.
SPIEGEL:
Are these just outliers?
Rossmann:
Those are the two extremes, but the differences are big overall.
In Berlin it is 254 euros, in Baden-Württemberg to 695 euros.
Only six federal states are above the average of 426 euros, the rest are below.
That means a bit exaggerated, the Bavarians don't even know what to do with the money, while Bremen hardly has the money with this instant program to buy basic equipment for every child in need.
The children in Bremen need a laptop just as urgently as in Bavaria.
SPIEGEL:
So should Bavaria forego money for Bremen's sake?
Rossmann:
Unfortunately, the child has almost fallen into the well.
I therefore advocate that the six "winning countries" with Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg at the top form a special fund from which children and young people in the ten other federal states are topped up to an average of 426 per affected child and young person.
That would be a real act of solidarity.
It should never be too late for that.
Basically: There are already role models for solidarity and social equality.
The education ministers could, for example, have taken the type of distribution of federal funds for school renovation from 2015 as a model.
We took 3.5 billion euros into our hands, primarily to promote school renovation in financially weak communities.
These funds were not distributed according to the Königstein key, but a third each according to the size of the population, the percentage of unemployment and the financial weakness of the municipality.
SPIEGEL:
The Königstein key is used in many areas to distribute federal funds, for example with the five billion dollar digital pact.
Don't you mind?
Rossmann:
The money is intended to drive innovation, and that applies equally to Bavaria, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania or any other federal state.
But here it was expressly about a social impulse, about the approach of promoting all children in need in Germany equally.
It is a mystery to me how this has become a program that deepens the digital divide between the rich and poor federal states.
It is important to me that you recognize this mistake - and not make it again.
SPIEGEL:
How did that come about at all?
The SPD was involved in the decision.
Rossmann:
I don't know.
I suspect that there is a lack of awareness of how dramatic the differences in child poverty are between the respective federal states.
That needs to change.
Instead, it is sometimes the case that countries like Bremen and Berlin are viewed very negatively.
But who in Bavaria or Baden-Württemberg thinks about what it would be like for them if almost every third child lived in a Hartz IV family?
We must see it more as a task for society as a whole to at least not let this child poverty grow through into educational poverty.
Digital participation would be a start.
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