School without pupils: regionally this also occurs in the new school year (symbol picture)
Photo:Caroline Seidel / dpa
Suddenly the school is closed again. This is the scenario that students, parents and teachers in Germany currently have to constantly reckon with. Since the new school year began in around half of the federal states, there have been reports of repeated, short-term shutdowns due to corona cases - or because there is a suspicion that school actors may have become infected. So far particularly affected: North Rhine-Westphalia.
Four schools here had to close completely a few days after the summer vacation, more than 30 schools in some cases. In many places, individual classes or age groups were sent home. There are around three dozen confirmed corona cases among teachers and almost 400 among schoolchildren. This has consequences for many others. 351 teachers and 5914 students had to be quarantined. At least. In the meantime, the numbers are likely to have risen further.
The Ministry of Education recorded the cases as of August 14th, two days after the start of school. More recent official figures are not available. However, more closings can be read in local media almost every day. Harald Willert, chairman of the NRW school leaders' association, considers the situation to be "extremely unsatisfactory". "This is very much at the expense of children, but also parents, teachers and school principals."
"Actually nothing happened"
Many schools are just as poorly prepared for renewed closings as they were with the sudden shutdown in March, says Willert, because politicians have neither used the past few weeks to develop a usable Plan B nor to improve the digital equipment across the board. "The sad thing is: nothing actually happened." When distance learning becomes necessary, some schools are doing well and others are bad. Quite a few students in need still do not have the loan devices promised by politicians. "It's a disaster. We keep losing the children," says Willert.
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It is noticeable that in NRW, as in other federal states, schools are completely shut down in some places. Elsewhere, however, only individual classes or age groups need to be quarantined. How long is also extremely different. In Berlin, for example, according to the school senate, a school closed for a day to ensure that possible contact persons do not come into the building. All tests then turned out negative.
In Hamburg, more than a dozen schools were affected by partial closings. In Hesse, individual classes had to be temporarily in quarantine. One of the main reasons is the infection rates among travelers returning. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania there were cases of infection in six of 563 schools. Two schools were completely closed, the rest partially. Around 500 students had to be in quarantine. Annoying: At a primary school, a test result turned out to be incorrect in retrospect. The closure would not have been necessary. In Brandenburg, lessons were canceled at two schools.
"No more educational policy question"
The drastic measures are intended to interrupt chains of infection as quickly as possible in order to prevent local corona hotspots with even greater effects. However, neither the school ministry nor the individual school decides whether, who and for how long students and teachers are sent home.
"This is then no longer a question of education policy, but a question of infection protection," said a spokesman from Rhineland-Palatinate. The local health department is responsible in each case, it is said in unison from all federal states that have already started the new school year. "That is why there is no nationwide uniform procedure, the individual case is always checked," writes Hessen, "and we welcome that".
However, it gets complicated when assessing individual cases. If students or teachers in North Rhine-Westphalia show symptoms that could indicate Covid-19, "in particular fever, dry cough, loss of the sense of taste / smell", then, according to the Ministry of Education, they are suspected of being contagious and must go home immediately. The school must inform the health department, which then decides on the further procedure.
"Decisions are incomprehensible"
"But that's where the problems start," says Willert. The symptoms are not always clearly recognizable. And when all coughing children are sent home during the next wave of colds in autumn, many schools will soon be largely empty. The school management would have to implement questionable political guidelines and ultimately find individual solutions because there were no specific rules.
"In addition, the further procedures are completely taken out of the hands of the school administrators by the health authorities," says Willert, "and these offices make very different decisions - with apparently the same situation."
For example, Willert knows about a school where a student tested positive for Corona. Two teachers had closer contact with him. Two different health departments were responsible for them. "One ordered a test, the other didn't." Willert can list several such examples. "Such decisions are incomprehensible," he criticizes, "and that creates uncertainty."
Category 1, 2 or 3 contact person?
The Brandenburg Ministry of Culture, citing the Robert Koch Institute, describes what the health authorities should at least formally orientate themselves to: "As long as contacts can be clearly delimited, only individual groups of people, for example a school class, are sent into quarantine at home. But when the infection occurs diffuse, the temporary closure of an entire facility may be necessary. "
According to the information, the health authorities differentiate between contact persons in categories 1, 2 and 3. A contact person in category 1 (increased risk of infection) had at least a quarter of an hour of "face contact" during a conversation. Or was the next person sitting next to you. Or exposed to a relevant number of aerosols.
"For school children and parents this means: If children are category 1 contact persons because they had contact with a confirmed Covid 19 case in class, only they are under quarantine at home. But their parents and siblings are not, as they are only contact persons a contact person. "
"We look to the new school year with concern and are dismayed by the catalog of measures that offers no security"
State Parents' Conference NRW
For many parents, this is little consolation. The state parents' conference in North Rhine-Westphalia, for example, would like other hygiene rules such as minimum distance and instruction in small groups as well as regular tests in order to reduce the risk of infection on the one hand and avoid complete closings on the other. "We are looking at the new school year with concern and are dismayed by the catalog of measures that do not offer any security," said the LEK. Mothers and fathers are dependent on planning security. If the child is at home, those in employment will not be looked after.
"In Germany there was always the advice to set up constant, so-called epidemiological groups in schools that have little contact with others and should not be larger than a class," says Olaf Köller, who works at the Leopoldina Science Academy at the Has worked on recommendations for the federal government.
But many schools, including many federal states, would not have managed that. Instead, a year or even several years were defined as groups. "This slips into the dilemma: as soon as a child is infected, the whole class has to stay at home.
While the outrage among parents and teachers is great, NRW Minister of Education Yvonne Gebauer (FDP) speaks of a "successful start to school", 99 percent of the schools could continue to offer face-to-face lessons. She calls on all school actors to deal with the corona virus "just as consistently as calmly and professionally". It is important "that in future not every infection in the vicinity of schools automatically leads to a complete school closure". That, however, is ultimately not in the hands of the schools.
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