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Annalena Baerbock, party leader of the Greens (archive)
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Britta Pedersen / picture alliance / dpa
The Greens are calling for greater efforts to guarantee every child the right to education, even during the corona pandemic.
"We need an educational protection screen for children and young people that ensures that every child is actually reached," says party leader Annalena Baerbock.
To this end, the material prerequisites for flexible and safe learning would have to be made available everywhere.
Disadvantaged children should be given "priority and therefore much better" support than before.
In a position paper published on Wednesday, the Green politician proposes, among other things, a nationwide right to Corona funding in the event of learning backlogs.
Baerbock warned that children should also be taken into account who still have no digital access at home, whose parents cannot help with homeschooling or who have failed to register their children for emergency care.
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"The consequences are fatal for these children," writes Baerbock in the paper.
Primary school students forget the entire alphabet or the multiplication table, others break the daily structure or the school lunch is missing.
Educational researchers, paediatricians and other specialists are also urgently warning these days of the serious consequences of the nationwide school closings since mid-December.
Socially disadvantaged children in particular run the risk of being left behind.
The injustice of opportunity could worsen.
New Equal Opportunities Program
Federal Education Minister Anja Karliczek presented a new ten-year program to promote equal opportunities in the German school system on Wednesday: "School makes you strong".
In a first phase over five years, starting from the school year 2021/22, scientists in around 200 schools are to determine what needs they have in order to better support socially disadvantaged schoolchildren.
Together with local educators, strategies and concepts are to be developed from which as many other schools as possible are to benefit in a second five-year phase.
According to the information, the federal and state governments are making a total of 125 million euros available for the program.
"We have a good educational system in Germany," said Karliczek, but emphasized with regard to socially disadvantaged students, "but the weaknesses have become quite clear in the pandemic."
In the debate about the duration of school closings, Karliczek advocated a cautious course.
"At the moment I'm always in the situation that I say, better wait 14 days longer now," said the CDU politician.
But she can also understand those who point to a not so high infection rate in their region.
"And the concern, how about the young people, of course concerns everyone."
Baerbock calls for rapid tests for personal use
According to the joint resolutions of the federal and state governments, daycare centers and schools should remain closed at least until mid-February to contain the corona pandemic.
More than three million daycare children and around eleven million schoolchildren are affected.
Chancellor Angela Merkel and other politicians had already promised that daycare centers and schools should have priority in the course of the lockdown easing.
To ensure that the protection against infection is maintained as well as possible when schools reopen, Baerbock calls for accompanying measures.
Corona rapid tests for self-application, which are now also available as spitting tests, would have to be approved by Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn immediately so that they could be used regularly with the gradual opening of the schools there, according to the position paper of the Greens.
In addition, enough FFP2 masks should be available for teachers.
"Of course it costs money, but not everyone can say that schools have priority, but when it comes to the requirements they always fall behind," criticized Baerbock.
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