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Ministry of Education: Requirement of a medical certificate in case of justified doubt

2023-06-06T17:42:01.608Z

Highlights: Schools can only require a medical certificate from parents "if there is reasonable doubt" as to whether students will miss lessons for health reasons. Pediatricians and adolescent doctors in North Rhine-Westphalia announced on Monday that they no longer wanted to issue certificates for missing students. Blanket certificates for purely control purposes are no longer to be issued. A violation of compulsory schooling is an administrative offence and can be punished with a fine.. NRW's Minister of Education Dorothee Feller (CDU). © Rolf Vennenbernd/dpa.



NRW's Minister of Education Dorothee Feller (CDU). © Rolf Vennenbernd/dpa

Schools can only require a medical certificate from parents "if there is reasonable doubt" as to whether students will miss lessons for health reasons. This was pointed out by the NRW Ministry of Education in Düsseldorf on Tuesday evening in response to a dpa request. These are decisions on a case-by-case basis. In special cases, the North Rhine-Westphalian School Act also provides for the possibility of obtaining an official medical report.

Pediatricians and adolescent doctors in North Rhine-Westphalia had announced on Monday that they no longer wanted to issue certificates for missing students immediately before or after the school holidays. One could not and did not want to "play controllers for the schools," the associations of North Rhine and Westphalia-Lippe of the Professional Association of Pediatricians and Adolescent Physicians (BVKJ) had justified. Blanket certificates for purely control purposes are no longer to be issued.

According to the ministry, whether there are reasonable doubts and justify a medical certificate requirement is a question of the circumstances in each individual case. Indications could be, for example, "frequent absences from performance reviews or absences immediately before the start or after holidays". Only for final examinations and re-examinations, the training and examination regulations expressly provide for a medical certificate, as it was said in Düsseldorf.

"Through the existing legal regulation, the state legislature in North Rhine-Westphalia has already ensured that school-related certificate requirements are only made to the extent that is actually necessary and that paediatricians and adolescent doctors are not burdened by a large number of medical certificate requests for purely formal-administrative reasons," the Ministry of Education emphasized. A violation of compulsory schooling is an administrative offence and can be punished with a fine.

At the end of 2022, the company had already responded to previous appeals from paediatricians and adolescent doctors, reminded schools of the current legal situation via the district governments and emphasised "that it requires particularly careful examination and consideration" as to whether a medical certificate is necessary. The BVKJ North Rhine had also confirmed to the ministry that this circular had achieved the desired effect, the Ministry of Education described.

On the other hand, the two BVKJ state associations of North Rhine and Westphalia-Lippe had emphasized on Monday that a "surveillance" of patients and parents "for the purpose of proving unauthorized truancy" was not a medical task. If the state wants to prevent parents from "arbitrarily extending the holidays", it must "do this itself". Dpa

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2023-06-06

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