Buffalos in the living room, maybe with parents in the home office or raging siblings around them: Learning in the corona crisis is also a special challenge for schoolchildren. The countries actually wanted to agree on further steps.
Berlin (dpa) - In the corona crisis, the federal and state governments postponed the decision on further openings of schools and daycare centers until May 6.
Then "very clear decisions" should be made, "in what sequence and in what way school and daycare are possible again," announced Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) in Berlin after a switching conference with the Prime Ministers. The next round of consultations by the federal and state governments is planned for next Wednesday.
When she returned, she didn't expect an "either-or", "only the big students or only the little ones," said Merkel. You think more of a "parallel process of the different age groups", in which initially no group returns completely.
Countries such as Saxony-Anhalt, Saarland or Bremen have been planning the return of certain groups of students for Monday. In most federal states, schools have been closed except for emergency care since mid-March. NRW Prime Minister Armin Laschet (CDU) emphasized that he would like to discuss further steps next Wednesday. In doing so, he relativized an announcement by his school ministry that from May 11 all elementary school students would go back to school on a daily basis "in a rolling system".
A research group led by the virologist Christian Drosten from the Charité in Berlin warns in a previously published study of the unrestricted opening of schools and kindergartens in Germany. According to the analysis in the corona pandemic, which has not yet been verified by independent experts, children are probably just as contagious as adults. The number of viruses that can be detected in the respiratory tract does not differ between different age groups, the scientists reported.
Merkel also referred to an agreement between the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the federal states on Tuesday, according to which the last classes of elementary schools could gradually return to schools as of May 4, as well as students who want to graduate in 2021.
According to the Minister of Education's decision, every student should be able to attend school at least once a day or week before the summer holidays. In the end, however, the concrete decisions remained a matter for the country. According to the ministers of culture, there will be no real return to everyday school life for the eleven million pupils in Germany before the summer holidays. A mix of face-to-face lessons and learning at home is planned.
Already last week thousands of young people returned in many federal states, but only the final classes - for exams or exam preparation. On Monday in other countries high school graduates, vocational students and pupils who were about to graduate from high school followed.
The family ministers of the federal and state governments had recently suggested that the daycare centers should be opened again cautiously and step by step - but also not given a specific schedule. All they gave was the recommendation "to make it possible to return to work in the coming weeks and months for educational and developmental psychological reasons". This should be done gradually with more and more children, after each level it should be seen how the infection numbers develop. However, it is clear that educators cannot maintain the specified 1.5 meter distance when working with children under the age of six, the ministers emphasized.
On Thursday, Chancellor-in-Office Helge Braun expressed the hope that all daycare children could be looked after again before the summer holidays. Ultimately, it depends on the development of infection numbers, he told Hit Radio FFH.
Many parents of small children feel left alone by politics, because shops and schools are gradually reopening, but there is still no perspective at daycare centers. Children who have parents who are urgently needed at work, for example in the healthcare sector, are particularly in need of care. Emergency care had recently been expanded, for example to single parents in many countries.
Link to the study
Tweet Drosten to the science study