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»Any nonsense ideas«: Schoolchildren in Berlin (archive picture)
Photo: Wolfgang Kumm / picture alliance / dpa
The fact that the red-red-green majority in the Berlin House of Representatives also receives broad support from the ranks of the CDU is rather the exception.
But when it came to the question of how pupils' knowledge gaps should be closed after the pandemic, there was broad agreement this week: After a change in the school law, children at Berlin schools up to the 10th grade can voluntarily repeat a school year.
The possibility of staying seated independently, however, causes considerable controversy outside the state parliament.
"Now every single federal state comes up with some nonsense ideas," said Ralf Treptow, chairman of the Association of Senior Academic Directors in Berlin, on the plans on Deutschlandfunk.
The headmaster of the Rosa-Luxemburg-Gymnasium in the Pankow district fears a "fiasco" - because of the overflowing first grades in elementary schools, but also because parents are too ambitious If the school does not see a need for their children to voluntarily remain seated, they decide.
According to Treptow, this could lead to “the school possibly becoming unorganizable”.
Warning of a "disaster"
Gordon Lemm, City Councilor for Education in Marzahn-Hellersdorf and himself a member of the SPD, doesn't think much of the ideas of his state government.
"Every broom closet is already occupied," Lemm told the "Tagesspiegel," and there is no longer any space in the schools for more children and young people who are voluntarily repeating a year en masse.
In an open letter, the headmasters' associations in the capital had previously warned of a "school-organizational catastrophe".
Gordon Lemm now makes another suggestion: He wants to gain additional study time through regular Saturday classes.
New premises would not be required for this, he wants to recruit the staff from independent agencies.
Saturday classes, according to Lemm, were common in the West German states until the 1970s, and in East Germany even until the fall of the Wall.
Teachers responded with cynicism.
She had just finished several hours of work outside of the regular class and was "ready for Saturday class immediately after dinner," tweeted a vocational school teacher.
Certificates only in Advent?
The Bamberg education researcher Marcel Helbig, professor at the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories, is also promoting a significant extension of the learning times in the current school year.
Helbig said in an interview with SPIEGEL that "we can no longer save it in its current form. We should extend the school year nationwide until Christmas."
more on the subject
Suggestion from educational researcher: "We should extend the school year nationwide until Christmas" An interview by Armin Himmelrath
An idea that Ralf Treptow, the headmaster of the Berlin school, can also appreciate.
Treptow had already suggested this a year ago, in the first school shutdown, at the Conference of Ministers of Education (KMK), but it was not heard.
He wished, Treptow told Deutschlandfunk, "that there is now a concentrated action in the KMK and that the KMK might manage to think a year or two ahead and not just drive through the fog on sight."
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