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Keeping schools open despite the pandemic is “the highest priority” for education ministers with a view to working parents. And although the critical values of new corona infections are exceeded in almost all cities and municipalities, the recommendation of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), for example, to return to a company with a middle class is being ignored in many federal states.
The Association of German Teachers has again harshly criticized this policy of the federal states in the face of the dire situation of the crown. “We consider it fundamentally wrong that the majority of federal states suspended the hygiene level plan of the Conference of Ministers of Education and the RKI recommendations and threw them away,” said the association’s president, Heinz-Peter Meidinger of the “Handelsblatt “.
Face-to-face teaching for weak students, distance learning for high achievers?
“Health protection measures in schools must not be completely unrelated to the growing number of infections in Germany and the rules of conduct that apply to the rest of society in the closing month of November,” Meidinger said. It requires “clear stipulations” from politicians, from which new schools with an infection rate (incidence number) would have to tighten their health protection measures until the reestablishment of the distance rule with classes reduced by half and hybrid teaching. “The teachers association wants to give local schools a great deal of discretion in terms of implementation,” Meidinger said.
The Robert Koch Institute described in a paper in October that corona outbreaks in schools had been “observed to an increasing degree” since they reopened. The RKI concept contemplates prescribing mouth guards, at least for older students, even during class, from a value of 35 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants in the last seven days. The RKI recommends split classes for staggered lessons starting at a value of 50.
“In a school, learning groups can be reduced in size so that children who particularly need support continue to attend lessons in the classroom and others who can be supported by their parents at home do more education at home,” he suggests Meidinger. An elementary school could leave students in the lower grades in school, while the upper grades “temporarily transition to distance learning.” But it is important that people react. “For the moment, politics is leaving schools alone.”
