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A teacher in Baden-Württemberg: According to GEW, schools are reaching their breaking point
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Bernd Weissbrod / dpa
The corona numbers have risen again in schools in Germany.
In the past week, 348,000 corona and quarantine cases were known among schoolchildren, as the Conference of Ministers of Education (KMK) announced on Friday.
The week before, there were 275,000 cases.
Around 35,700 corona and quarantine cases were reported to teachers.
This is a high in the current omicron wave.
The week before it was 28,300.
The figures published weekly by the KMK are based on feedback from the federal states, but they are only comparable and meaningful to a limited extent.
On the one hand, because there are always holidays and no figures are reported from the federal states concerned.
In addition, data on quarantine cases are not available from all countries.
Berlin no longer reports any numbers.
Reason: "Rapid tests carried out in school are no longer confirmed by PCR tests, so that no valid data are available."
Hamburg's schools just returned from vacation this week - and are also reporting a sharp increase.
According to the authority, the number of infections among school employees has at least tripled compared to the week before the holidays.
The numbers from Friday were still missing.
Educational unions had already warned on Thursday that schools were reaching their limits in view of the corona pandemic and the current high level of infection.
“The absence of teachers due to corona is currently hitting schools hard,” said Anja Bensinger-Stolze, board member of the Education and Science Union (GEW), the editorial network Germany.
She expects the numbers to continue to rise, “because the corona protection measures should largely be dropped or have already been collected”.
This is a wrong political decision.
Bensinger-Stolze emphasized: “We appeal to all those responsible in politics to adhere to the mask requirement as well as to hygiene and test concepts so that the situation does not get out of hand.
The teachers are already working at the limit.«
A transitional period ends on April 2nd, after which the federal states can make masks compulsory in schools.
If the obligation is to continue, the state parliaments would probably have to issue new rules for it.
There are a total of around eleven million students and almost 900,000 teachers at around 40,000 schools and vocational schools in Germany.
sun/dpa