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Schoolgirls in class in Mainz (archive image)
Photo: Andreas Arnold / DPA
On Thursday the members of the Standing Conference (KMK) patted each other on the back: KMK President Stefanie Hubig (SPD) and Baden-Württemberg's Minister of Education Susanne Eisenmann (CDU) celebrated a "historic day".
The reason for the self-praise: the agreement to work more closely from elementary school to high school - although it is still far from clear whether the plans will actually lead to more comparability between the federal states.
But the great unity of the ministers only lasted a few hours.
On Friday, when the KMK was about to deal with the corona crisis, those responsible withdrew back to the already known, rather vague similarities.
The right to education has "absolute priority", said Stefanie Hubig after the meeting.
And: "Ventilation remains the be-all and end-all."
Hygiene measures, distance requirements - all of these remain in place, but ultimately have to be decided regionally.
Incidentally, it is agreed that an extension of the Christmas holidays is not being sought - and that there should be a new virtual KMK meeting at the end of next week.
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Less than half an hour earlier, Susanne Eisenmann had made it clear how little the common ground conjured up in the KMK counts in day-to-day business.
She announced that Baden-Württemberg would extend the mask requirement to lessons from next week - similar to what applies in Bavaria and from Monday also in Schleswig-Holstein.
"The extension of the mask requirement from grade 5 to teaching applies from a nationwide 7-day incidence of over 35," said a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Culture.
"Today we will inform the schools that this will have to be observed from next Monday."
Shortly afterwards, Hamburg followed suit: from Monday, high school and vocational school students must also wear mouth and nose protection in class, and airing every 20 minutes will also be mandatory, the Senate announced on Friday.
"Pseudo-discussions"
The North Rhine-Westphalian Teachers' Association is also calling for a similar tightening of the rules.
"There is a tried and tested means of offering reliable school lessons in the next six months: the mask," said Association President Andreas Bartsch of the "Rheinische Post".
At the same time, Bartsch advocated ending the current "pseudodiscussions" about maintaining classes during the second corona wave.
"It is only a matter of time before the first one calls for the hot water bottle," criticized Bartsch, referring to the debates about corona precautions in schools in the upcoming winter.
"There have already been tips that the students sit down in class with sweaters, scarfs and blankets with the windows open."
Among other things, the chairwoman of the philologists' association, Susanne Lin-Klitzing, provoked with the statement that winter clothing must be worn permanently in class.
But this provocation fizzled out - or was not recognized: NRW School Minister Yvonne Gebauer (FDP) said on Thursday in a WDR interview without any noticeable irony: "If we can use an additional jacket, perhaps an additional scarf for lessons due to the pandemic Coming through the winter would be pretty good. "
The opposition in the Düsseldorf state parliament gratefully accepted the proposal.
"What does Yvonne Gebauer actually do professionally?", Etched the Greenland chairman Felix Banaszak.
And the parliamentary manager of the SPD parliamentary group, Sarah Philipp, speculated that next Gebauer would probably recommend "hot milk with honey" to get through the lessons.
With the education ministers, Stefanie Hubig made clear after the KMK meeting, the view of the current situation is different.
Schools are not the driver of the pandemic, "the infections are often carried into schools," says the KMK President.
What role do schools play?
However, there are quite different views among experts on this point.
For example, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) declared in a strategy paper on Tuesday that "educational institutions are one of the places that have a role in the infection process" - even if there have been different findings so far.
According to a data query published by the RND on Friday at the ministries of education, an average of 98 percent of all pupils were able to take part in face-to-face classes by the start of the autumn break.
"We made the observation that there is no increased or, compared to the rest of society, increased infection rate at schools or daycare centers," said the Saarland Education Minister Christine Streichert-Clivot (SPD) the RND.
In contrast, there is a status report from the NRW health department for the last week of September.
According to this, although many cases could no longer be traced recently, the chain of infection ended in a school for nine percent and in a daycare center for two percent.
The largest part, at 35 percent, was made up by tracing back to private households.
A study recently published by the Bonn Research Institute for the Future of Work (IZA) on the infection rate after the summer vacation shows that the number of infections in the age group of school-age children and their parents declined after school started.
Because of the delayed end of vacation in the federal states, the effect could be observed well, according to the research team.
However, the situation after the summer vacation cannot be generalized as an unreserved plea for open schools, say the researchers.
They advise weighing up carefully rather than reflexively closing schools.
Parenthood split
In a similar way, the RKI also makes it clear in its strategy paper: Even if the role of schools in the infection process has not yet been clarified, it is important to keep the schools open - in terms of the development and education of children and adolescents and the care situation for parents .
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Mask requirement in schools: "It is not a child welfare risk" An interview by Armin Himmelrath
However, the way parents deal with the pandemic is just as heterogeneous as their assessment of the role of schools.
While the Federal Parents' Council is calling for smaller study groups to return to schools and for some of the students to teach from a distance, the interest group "Parents in Crisis" vehemently opposes this.
Before the maintenance of education and care is called into question, other areas of social and economic life must be severely restricted, if necessary.
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with material from dpa