Education ministers propose new rules for schools in hotspots

2020-11-23T22:31:14.861Z

Schools are likely to be the central topic in the federal-state switch on Wednesday. Education politicians are now open to concepts such as alternating lessons - but only under very specific conditions.

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Lessons with a mask: Corona rules in schools could become stricter (symbol picture)

Photo: Rolf Vennenbernd / dpa

Back to homeschooling, back to teaching in the shift system, or should it stay with the massively criticized »business as usual«?

During the deliberations of Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Prime Ministers of the federal states this Wednesday, stricter corona rules in Germany's schools will be a central point.

How these could look in detail, there are various, sometimes far-reaching requirements.

Even among the cultural ministers of the federal states, resistance to a changeover model is crumbling under the steadily increasing pressure - at least a little.

Federal Minister of Education Anja Karliczek has spoken out in favor of a partial return to homeschooling.

"Changing classes should be considered, especially in the higher grades, if the infection load is very high in the respective region," said the CDU politician to the newspapers of the "Funke Mediengruppe".

Alternating instruction means that, for example, in a rolling system in small groups, pupils only learn on a daily or weekly basis in face-to-face classes at the schools.

The rest is done at home, ideally digitally.

Even the Chancellery is pressing

Several parent and teacher associations such as the Association of Education and Upbringing (VBE) have been urging for months that the ministers of education switch to this model.

The minimum distance in the classroom and thus the necessary protection against infection can only be observed in small groups.

Everything else is "adventurous".

In order to reduce contacts, the Chancellery also recently pushed for a larger part of the lessons to be moved home.

Otherwise, after the sobering development of new corona infections, despite the closure of restaurants, leisure and cultural facilities, there is no chance that the second corona wave will ebb, warned Chancellor Helge Braun.

The 16 education ministers of the federal states, on the other hand, had insisted to the end that the schools - unlike in spring - should remain open as long as possible despite the pandemic and that children should be schooled on site, with full hours.

This is the best way to implement the right to education.

The politicians have been repeating this almost mantra-like since the end of the summer holidays, not least in the sense of equal opportunities.

Otherwise children from socially disadvantaged families threatened to be left behind.

There is a lack of staff and rooms

Several country bosses had also warned that lessons in the alternating model with half classes would fail because of the implementation if part of the timetable should not be deleted.

There is a lack of staff and rooms.

In addition, there is a general complaint that many schools are far from being set up to teach digitally.

Even after a switch on Friday, the ministers of education persist in keeping the schools open - but they are willing to compromise.

For schools that are located in so-called hotspots, the following measures should be possible, as reported by circles of the Standing Conference (KMK) on Monday:

Schools particularly affected by the infection process should be able to switch to rolling face-to-face teaching in smaller study groups from the 11th grade onwards.
It must be ensured that all students can be reached.
Final classes should remain in face-to-face classes as much as possible.
In a second step, it should be possible to extend these exceptions to lower grades in secondary schools.
However, the ministers did not set a fixed figure for the number of infections from which this should apply.
To curb the occurrence of infection, school politicians are also proposing that a mask be compulsory in class, as is already the case in some federal states - initially for upper secondary school and vocational schools, and possibly also for the lower grades at secondary schools.
In schools where there are corona cases, there should be more, timely tests.
The start of lessons can be staggered in order to reduce the risk of infection in local transport.
Municipalities should therefore offer special school transports with the help of private companies.

Hotel rooms and coaches should help

SPD health expert Karl Lauterbach recently looked at the way to school.

In addition to a division into face-to-face and digital lessons, the risk of infection must also be reduced, he told the "Rheinische Post".

»It is paradoxical that overcrowded school buses and trams are fueling the number of infections and at the same time many coach companies fear for their existence.

You should jump in right now and take the local public transport to the schools and back by bus. "

The candidate for the CDU chairmanship, Friedrich Merz, suggested moving the lessons to hotel rooms without further ado.

"You could move to hotels or other large rooms, and the schools could offer time-shifted lessons," Merz told the Tagesspiegel.

It is crucial to keep the number of missed lessons as low as possible, according to Merz.

"The damage that otherwise occurs cannot be repaired with money."

Those responsible had to develop more imagination as to how the lessons could be maintained.

Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) advocated sending the whole class into domestic isolation if an infection occurs - instead of just the people sitting next to them, as was often the case before.

In order to prevent more and more students from being in quarantine, said Spahn, the isolation should be lifted after a negative rapid test on the fifth day.

Complete school closings are considered unlikely

During the deliberations last Monday, the federal-state group had not yet been able to agree on new rules for schools.

In their draft resolution for the deliberations on Wednesday, the Prime Ministers are now calling for a mask requirement to be introduced from class 7, but not nationwide, but only in those regions in which the number of new infections exceeds 50 per 100,000 inhabitants within seven days » clearly «exceeds.

Infection-free schools should be able to be excluded from this.

According to the will of the Prime Minister, the federal states should decide for themselves about homeschooling.

This would take into account the fact that measures can be tailored to the regionally very different infection rates.

It is now conceivable that the round will follow the KMK on Wednesday and reduce face-to-face teaching for upper levels and vocational schools.

The advantage: With the older students it is not necessary for parents to have to stay at home to look after them.

Other possible steps are to extend the Christmas holidays forwards or backwards, according to country circles.

In North Rhine-Westphalia, for example, schools close two days earlier.

It is extremely unlikely that the Merkel group could agree to completely close schools in Germany.

Finding a workable compromise is difficult for a number of reasons.

On the one hand, the right of children to education and the protection of school actors from infection are still mutually exclusive.

On the other hand, the study situation on the role of children and young people and schools in the corona pandemic is not entirely clear.

The professional opinions also differ.

The director of the Institute for Virology at the University Hospital Düsseldorf, Jörg Timm, told the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung" that he considered the previous attitude of the federal states, according to which schools were not drivers of the pandemic, "no longer tenable."

The national science academy Leopoldina, which also advises the Chancellery, emphasized in a letter to the country chiefs: "Schoolchildren are an essential part of the infection process."

Pediatricians: "Leave the schools open"

The German Academy for Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine made an urgent plea in a statement on Monday, shortly before the federal-state switch: "Leave the schools open".

The data show that infections are transmitted from adults to children much more frequently than vice versa.

Schools are "no hotspots of the pandemic, even at the current stage of the second wave."

At the same time, the school closings in the spring had serious consequences for children - from educational deficits to endangering the child's well-being.

Hamburg's school authority had also submitted a study according to which the risk of infection for children and adolescents is lower in school than outside.

It is noticeable that pupils under the age of twelve are only half as likely to be infected as older ones, but not more than adults.

This fits in with a large-scale data analysis by paediatricians around the chief physician of the Passau Children's Clinic, Matthias Keller, from which there are no indications of a high number of unreported corona cases among children.