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Classroom without students (symbolic picture)
Photo: Annette Riedl / dpa
"We are now making decisions from Thursday to Thursday," says Claudia Koch.
She is the state parent representative and not exactly enthusiastic about the new rules in Thuringia.
"It's incredibly difficult for the school management team, and difficult to plan for the parents."
As of this week, the school management should decide for themselves whether lessons can take place as planned despite Corona - or whether the students are taught in fixed learning groups or alternately due to Corona.
Every Thursday, the schools have to determine how things will continue in the coming week.
Better than comprehensive distance learning
There is a form for this, explains a spokesman for the Thuringian Ministry of Education, Martin Just. In it, the school administrators state, among other things, how many teachers and students are sick or in quarantine.
In this way it is possible to assess how the lessons should be organized in the coming week.
If the situation is so dire that the school wants to switch to distance learning, the education authority has to give its approval.
At least that is better than taking distance learning across the board, says Koch.
Originally, Thuringia wanted to close the schools for two weeks after the holidays and teach the children and young people from a distance.
However, the Federal Infection Protection Act no longer allows this, said Education Minister Helmut Holter (Linke) between the years and withdrew the plans at short notice: "That is why this decision must now be made locally by the schools."
Corona tests for everyone
There are similar requirements in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Here, too, the schools should decide for themselves on their own teaching model starting this week on Thursdays. It was clear, however, that all schools would start in attendance on the first day after the holidays. Corona tests should give clues as to how things can go next week. Unlike in Thuringia, they are also compulsory for those pupils who have been vaccinated or have recovered.
The Education and Science Union (GEW) in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania welcomed the "long-awaited Omikron plan"; like other associations and interest groups, it was involved in the planning.
The result is a "three-phase model";
the younger students in particular should be taught face-to-face for as long as possible.
Which phase the school enters depends on "how lessons can be secured with the existing staff," said Education Minister Simone Oldenburg (left) when the model was presented on Monday.
"Significant impairment"
The reason for the new measures is the expected wave of Omikron infections.
The new virus variant is much more contagious, writes the ministry in a letter to the school administrators, and could undermine vaccination protection, "which can lead to a significant impairment of school operations".
Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate have already announced that they will allow schools to react more flexibly to the local situation.
How many teachers fail in the worst case also depends on the quarantine regulations.
The heads of the federal and state governments want to advise on Friday whether they should shorten the isolation times in order to avoid staff shortages at important facilities.
So far, the health authorities usually decide which classes have to stay at home.
It was not planned for a school to determine itself that it drives better with the change model - and in the first year of the pandemic even led to a warning from a school principal who halved the classes to protect against infection.
On Wednesday afternoon, the ministers of education want to discuss the situation in schools in one switch.
They are expected to renew their appeal from mid-December to continue teaching students face-to-face as a priority.
Federal Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (FDP) appealed to the education ministers of the federal states at the Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs to continue to refrain from closing schools, despite fears that the number of infections caused by Omikron would explode.
“I very much hope that the Standing Conference will speak out in favor of keeping schools open with Omikron,” she told the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung”.
Stark-Watzinger promised: "As a federal government, we will support everything that is necessary to make this possible." The schools are "largely safe" places through testing, wearing masks and hygiene measures.
They had a "stabilizing effect and have so far not been a driver of pandemics," said Stark-Watzinger of the newspaper.
In spite of Omikron, face-to-face teaching must have "absolute priority".
"We have seen that it is precisely the children who need special support who are disadvantaged when schools are closed and when they are taught at a distance." There were "significant learning gaps".
Face-to-face teaching is therefore a question of »equal opportunities«.
"We have to guarantee the right to education, which the Federal Constitutional Court has once again underlined," said Stark-Watzinger of the "Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung".
It is important that vaccination with mobile teams in schools is promoted more strongly.
Hamburg's school senator Ties Rabe, coordinator of the SPD-governed federal states in the KMK, also told the dpa news agency: "I assume that the conference of ministers of education will once again reaffirm its decision to keep the schools open as long as possible."
Hesse's Minister of Education, Alexander Lorz, coordinator for the CDU-governed countries in the KMK, called for a reduction in quarantine times.
"Because the schools with eleven million students nationwide and 800,000 teachers are part of the critical infrastructure for me, which now has to be specially protected," said Lorz of the dpa.
Schleswig-Holstein's education minister Karin Prien (CDU), who took over the KMK presidency at the beginning of the year, told the newspapers of the Funke media group that the needs of children and young people had to be kept in mind more closely than before.
"That means that we will only close the schools when all other options have been exhausted."
In Thuringia, Lotta Loraweck from the state student council is hoping for clarity. "It didn't have to be back and forth," she says. She knows pupils who did not know by Tuesday lunchtime whether school would take place again for them on Wednesday, the first regular day of class after the holidays. "We need more predictability and uniform guidelines," she says. In addition, she would like the KMK to make testing compulsory for vaccinated and recovered pupils as well.
The Thuringian parent representative Koch describes it as foreseeable that pupils would be sent back to alternate or distance lessons.
Families would soon be faced with the question of how they could do it.
In a petition, the state parents' representative body demands continued payment of wages in this case so that parents can look after their children.
This must also apply to children over the age of 12, says Koch, in order to be able to deal with psychological problems.
With material from AFP and dpa