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Pupils in NRW (archive image)
Photo: Marcel Kusch / dpa
The schools were closed for many weeks and months because of Corona, and distance learning was characterized in many places by technical failures.
Teacher representatives nationwide are now calling for the size of the learning gaps to be recorded.
"After two and a half years of school in the pandemic, many students still have massive learning deficits," said the President of the German Teachers' Association, Heinz-Peter Meidinger, to the newspapers of the Funke media group.
"By the beginning of the next school year at the latest, we need nationwide comparable assessments of the level of learning in order to be able to honestly assess the need for action," he demanded.
The catch-up program by the federal and state governments has so far changed little about the problem.
This is also due to the fact that the additional offers are often not available across the board and have not reached the students who urgently need the tutoring.
According to Meidinger, surveys in German, mathematics and the first foreign language would be useful, possibly also in the natural sciences.
"It would also be important for these tests to take place in certain grades that are crucial for a successful further school career: for example in the third, sixth, eighth and tenth grades."
It's not about complex exams, but about ungraded short tests that enable a basic assessment.
But it is already clear: »The catch-up program must continue, and above all it must become more binding.
It must not be the case that many particularly affected children and young people do not benefit from it at all," said the teacher president.
He also warned against adjusting to poorer performance over the long term.
It is true that the federal states are currently reacting to the learning deficits caused by the pandemic with generous regulations for transfers and degrees.
But that has to change again.
»Otherwise we risk that the performance level of school leavers will be lowered in general.«
Hamburg was the first federal state to present a learning status survey last year.
According to this, pupils at hotspot schools in particular had large learning gaps.
kha/AFP
