Now the task is to somehow save yourself until the summer vacation.
Promptly, the discussions no longer revolve around proper ventilation, but rather whether it is generally better to learn outside than in the classroom - from the point of view of some ministries that would be very practical, because then the annoying air cleaner debate would have been dealt with by itself, so to speak.
Otherwise, the ministers currently do not necessarily give the impression that they already know exactly which concepts they want to use for the next school year in late summer. They'd rather praise themselves for the Abitur and other final exams that have now started in many countries. They almost convey something like a feeling of normality - including one or the other mishap: Summer time is not always winter time
(“That's going on”)
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At least one lesson can already be learned from Corona: The topic of media and news literacy is so important to society that it should also play a stronger role than before in schools.
Researchers have found details of this in a new study in which SPIEGEL was also involved
(“Good to know”)
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We hope that you will also find something worth knowing and reading about learning and schools during this »little break«.
If you have any ideas for us, please write to us!
The team from »Kleine Pause«
Silke Fokken, Kristin Haug, Armin Himmelrath, Miriam Olbrisch
Photo: Sven Hoppe / dpa
That's going on
1. What do we actually know?
The highest incidences - corona infections per 100,000 inhabitants in the previous seven days - are currently in the 5- to 25-year-old age group. On the one hand, this is worrying, but on the other hand it can also be explained: The vaccinations are effective for older people, the schools offer more or less intensive classroom formats again after the Easter holidays, depending on the federal state and regional location - and the regular tests with school children may even increase this effect .
Education journalist Jan-Martin Wiarda interprets the increased numbers differently and interprets what is happening in his blog as follows: "Although educational institutions are becoming safer, the official incidences among children and adolescents are increasing." One thing is clear: even more than a year after the start of the corona crisis There is still no really solid database - schools and everyone else who depends on it have to muddle through further.
In other areas, on the other hand, the numbers are clearer: The number of temporary positions for teachers has risen during the pandemic, report colleagues from "Zeit", among others, with a view to the situation in Hessen.
Last October, 11 percent of the teachers were on a fixed-term contract.
The GEW suspects that those affected are mainly teachers who have not been trained or are not fully trained - as a rule, all others would be accepted into school service with a kiss.
Photo: MICHAEL DALDER / REUTERS
2. Organizational issues
Even if there is no clear school policy line in the matter of Corona (or perhaps the lack of this clarity is the current constant): The schools must continue to function.
For example when it comes to the final exams.
As a rule, the candidates must be tested before the written exam or the oral exam.
If you refuse to take this test, you will write the test in a separate room - you cannot be excluded entirely.
There was an urgent decision in NRW last week.
And after the summer vacation?
Will everything get better then, because soon a vaccine may also be available for children and adolescents?
In any case, the practical school and educational policy challenges remain enormous, writes my colleague Silke Fokken in her analysis, which you can find here.
Enlarge picturePhoto:
Felix Kästle / picture alliance / dpa
3. What else?
No high school graduation year without mishaps: In the North Rhine-Westphalian weather, school life at a grammar school - possibly due to the pandemic - got so out of step that the clock in the examination room for the English high school graduates still showed winter time.
At the end of the exam, this led to confusion, time constraints, protests - and an appointment to write up for anyone who would like to.
Pupils were probably responsible for one of the mishaps in the previous Abitur class: They stood before the court in Bamberg on Monday for forging the school's master key and breaking into a safe to steal the examination papers.
As a result, the tests had to be exchanged across the country.
Details on the legal proceedings against the alleged perpetrators can be found here.
The trial ended with suspended sentences.
And if you still want to smile a bit, we recommend this tweet here: a pointed and sometimes quite nasty summary of typical reactions to a fictional fire in a school.
Parallels to the corona policy cannot be ruled out.
Photo: Donald Iain Smith / Tetra images RF / Getty Images
Good to know
Hopefully things will be very different in your class, but: A new study has produced terrifying figures on the information and communication skills of schoolchildren.
Half of the young people find it unimportant to find out about current events.
Reasons include: The respondents often lacked connection to their own everyday life in journalistic media.
We journalists should draw conclusions from this, but hopefully so should schools and school politics.
If you are now looking for suggestions as to how this can actually be implemented, then we have something for you: SPIEGEL Ed is the name of our initiative for more news and media literacy with workshops, videos and teaching materials.
You will find all information here.
That's it for this week. The “Small Break” team thanks you for your interest - see you next time! And we look forward to receiving your suggestions, questions or criticism.