Inclusion: Why is equal opportunity also an empty promise for special needs students?

Dear readers, good morning,

the disability rights activist Raúl Krauthausen recently had an idea: "We could also write 'In-klusion' because it should be so blatantly popular," he suggested on his Instagram account.

However, the wokeness has not yet arrived in everyday school life.

Instead: tears, tears, tears.

"We cried a lot," headmistress Sarah Lichtenberger from the web individual school told me.

The reason: »120 disabled children are too complex for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia«, says Lichtenberger sarcastically.

The school had lost a legal battle over where the final exams, which have to be administered by external examiners, are held.

Children and young people from all over Germany who are exempt from compulsory schooling due to serious illnesses or disabilities have been taught at their school in Bochum since 2002 - they receive individual lessons online.

The external final exams have been held centrally in Bochum for 19 years so that the teachers can accompany their students.

For example, because the young people have a severe autism disorder or can no longer enter the school building after a killing spree at their school, as Lichtenberger explains.

Since the number of examinees has recently increased, the state no longer wanted to offer the Hauptschule and Realschule examinations in one place: Minister of Education Yvonne Gebauer (FDP) had complained in the dispute that the Arnsberg district government “did not organize final examinations for the entire federal territory on a permanent basis « could .

In the end, only 60 of the 120 potential candidates registered for the exam, "as many as in previous years," says Lichtenberger.

Nevertheless, it remained the case that the final candidates for the exams were to be distributed to 16 locations in the state.

According to the school director, Lichtenberger, her teachers have now formed teams and are driving around the country in rental cars so that they can accompany their protégés to the exams as promised.

However, the teachers could not be divided into four, which is why not every child has their actual reference person with them.

This is a serious problem for autistic people, for example.

Lichtenberger has quite a crush on the NRW Minister of Education – and is not alone in this, as my colleague Miriam Olbrisch states in her portrait of Gebauer (»That's going on«).

In the same section I'll leave the vale of tears for now, because a colleague from Stuttgart reported on a successful example of inclusion.

At the end of the newsletter, the analytical focus is once again on participation.

In her guest contribution, Frankfurt professor Vera Moser uses pupils with special needs to show what Germany needs for more equal opportunities in the education system.

(»Debate of the week«)

What occupies you as a teacher, student, mother or father in everyday school life?

I would be happy if you write to us at bildung@spiegel.de.

For the SPIEGEL

Swantje Unterberg education team

That's going on

1. An avatar in the classroom

Fourth grader PJ has leukemia and is in isolation.

Thanks to a small robot, she can still take part in lessons, reports the »Stuttgarter Zeitung«: Since February, PJ has been the first Stuttgart child to take part in lessons via avatar.

The AV1 robot from the Norwegian start-up No Isolation was developed seven years ago and used in various schools - according to the company brochure, it has so far supported 1,600 children and young people worldwide.

»The most important advantages compared to participating via a normal video call: the child can change the direction of the camera, report via a light signal and show their mood - whether the eyes should look happy, sad or thoughtful.

The robot also looks cute and futuristic at the same time,” writes colleague Viola Volland.

2. Education policy in the NRW state election campaign

Education politics can be entertaining.

"Children on the hamster wheel to generate electricity," demands Die PARTEI when asked whether schools have to be climate-neutral.

Before the state elections next Sunday, the state student representation of North Rhine-Westphalia asked eight parties for their position on educational policy issues that are important to the students.

Based on the official Wahl-O-Mat from the Federal Agency for Civic Education, you can use the »Schul-o-Mat« to compare the positions of the CDU, SPD, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, DIE LINKE, Die PARTEI and the Pirates with your own.

"FDP and AfD have not submitted any answers," says the student representatives' website.

The Landesparentschaft der Gymnasium in NRW (LEGym) also focused on education policy in a less interactive way, but with a little more detailed answers: “Our association approached various parties in the state parliament with the most pressing questions from our point of view and at the same time provided its own answers formulated.« The result can be found here. 

My colleague Miriam Olbrisch took a look at the education policy of the current NRW minister - and analyzed that Yvonne Gebauer was "Hendrik Wüst's biggest problem".

With her zigzag course in the pandemic, the FDP minister upset parents, teachers and students - and thus also endangered the re-election of Prime Minister Wüst's black-yellow coalition.

3. The four reasons why the Corona catch-up program for schools could fizzle out

A lot of money, little plan: The federal government wants to spend two billion euros to support children with learning gaps after the pandemic.

But the help doesn't work.

Colleague Olbrisch has analyzed why that is. 

And otherwise?

Hamburg believes in religious instruction for everyone.

The city no longer wants to divide children according to denomination, but teach them together.

"This nationwide unique class does not separate, but brings together and thus enables dialogue between children and young people of different faiths and worldviews," says School Senator Ties Rabe.

number of the week

10 to 13

By the end of primary school, during the pandemic-related school closures, students have accumulated learning deficits in mathematics that correspond to 10 to 13 weeks.

This emerges from the MINT young talent barometer, which was published at the end of April.

debate of the week

Equal opportunities - the empty promise of the German school system

Equal opportunity?

Doesn't exist in the German school system.

Instead, it is pure luck how good the lessons turn out - depending on the individual school and sometimes even on the desire, mood and skills of individual teachers, writes the Frankfurt educational researcher Vera Moser in a guest article for SPIEGEL.de and shows this in the digitization and the lack of standards for children with special needs.

»Since the first PISA study in 2000, the finding has been repeated that almost a quarter of 15-year-olds do not achieve the lower level of competence in reading, mathematics and natural sciences.

And this dramatic number does not even cover the whole misery: children with special educational needs are usually not included in this – at least almost 10 percent of a year,” writes the professor for inclusion research at the Goethe University in Frankfurt.

She demands minimum standards, the call for them has so far been in vain - "a school can still label itself as inclusive, digital or otherwise without the need for necessary and verifiable criteria."

Vera Moser writes that the constitutional requirement for a minimum standard of school education must be accompanied by a national debate on the quality of teaching standards.

You can read the full length of her guest article here.

And what's your opinion?

Please write to us at bildung@spiegel.de 

We say goodbye until next time, the newsletter will be published again on May 24th.

The "Little Break" team thanks you for your interest!