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An incidence value of around 283 new infections per week per 100,000 residents, plus a clear recommendation from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI): When the Solingen city administration saw current infection figures for its location last Thursday, they made a plan.
From Wednesday and initially until the end of November, only half of Solingen’s older students should come to the classroom; the other part would be taught in parallel over the network. Only youth in the final grades, elementary and special needs students should continue to attend classes, “for the time being.” So says the Corona precautionary “general decree”, which city authorities published on Friday.
That would have been an “extraordinary” move, says Dagmar Becker, head of the school department, with the clear goal of keeping schools open to some 20,000 students in Solingen. The plan followed the RKI recommendations, according to which, starting from an incidence value of 50, a general mask requirement should be introduced in the classroom and smaller study groups should be introduced, “sharing or alternating classes”. Culture ministries have largely ignored these recommendations until now; now Solingen wanted to show that there is another way.
Düsseldorf red card
But the North Rhine-Westphalia government granted these plans on Tuesday afternoon. The Düsseldorf Health Ministry has directed the city not to implement its concept, at the request of the NRW Ministry of Education. That had already put a lot of pressure on the brakes. First it is necessary to verify if the model of alternative instruction of Solingen fulfills the legal requirements and is appropriate with a view to the process of infection in the city, had announced repeatedly since Friday the ministry led by the FDP. Ironically, the ministry whose boss Yvonne Gebauer entered the state election campaign in 2017 with the slogan “Digital first, second concerns.”
On Tuesday, Gebauer stated that the planned Solingen road contradicts “a similarly directed approach within the country, but also the agreed path within the community of states.” Shared lessons are a threat to educational equity: “The educational mandate for all children and young people cannot be fully fulfilled in this way.”
Solingen’s school administration, parents and teacher organizations are angered by the decision. “We are very disappointed with this decision,” said Solingen Mayor Tim Kurzbach (SPD) on Tuesday night, and you can see his bitterness: “I think this decision is wrong.” The city wanted to curb the high number of infections in Solingen, “intensively and in coordination with all high schools, exactly what the federal and state governments have been demanding of us for months.”
Half of the schools already affected by Corona
Now the Ministry of Education is responsible for the further infection process, Kurzbach said. And that’s predictably dramatic: On Tuesday morning there were infections in 17 classes in 15 schools in Solingen. “Today eleven more classes have been added, now 20 schools are affected.” There are a total of 40 schools in the city. But the Education Ministry was unavailable for further discussion on Tuesday.
“The lesson alternation plans had broad approval from all the players in the school,” says Becker. Schools have been gaining experience and developing concepts since March. “It has also shown that we at Solingen have come a long way in terms of digitization,” Becker said. However, the city cannot implement its concept now.
The Union for Education and Science (GEW) had expressly welcomed the planned shift lessons in advance. The concept is “exemplary” and shows “responsible action by the city of Solingen,” praised GEW State President Maike Finnern: “It is good that schools are not closed.” The Krefeld city administration wanted to adopt the Solingen model and thought of school classes divided into face-to-face lessons.
Stephan Wassmuth is not surprised that the Düsseldorf Ministry of Education is blocking the new concept. The president of the Federal Council of Parents perceives the federal states as “a disaster” when proceeding with the crisis of the crown: “He goes crazy.” The strategies of the ministries, if they exist at all, are no longer understandable. “In view of this lack of plan, there is extreme discomfort among parents,” says Wassmuth. Many of the statements from the ministries struck him as powerless and hasty actionism.
No communication anywhere
For Wednesday afternoon, the Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs invited representatives of parent-teacher associations to a video conference to discuss how to proceed in the crisis. Parents and teachers had clearly positioned themselves in advance because they are increasingly concerned about the protection of health in schools: Parents’ associations across Germany had launched a petition to the German Bundestag calling for “swift action” ” in physical and mental matters Protect the integrity “of teachers, students and their families. More than 10,000 people had already signed on Tuesday afternoon.
Julia Offe is a biologist and mother of two children at a secondary school in Hamburg. “Communication is not exactly the strength of school policy and schools in this crisis,” he says. There was a case of crown in the wider circle of his son’s friends. “That was a weekend. And then I kept checking my emails because I thought: there must be some information from the school, some kind of instruction,” says Julia Offe: “But nothing came.”
Because she didn’t hear anything, after a few days she thought the corona infection was fake news, until a mother reported to the WhatsApp parent mailing list: the newspaper said there was a case at the school. Why don’t you listen to it? “It wasn’t until a few hours later that I received an anxious email from the principal,” says Julia Offe. Meanwhile, her employers had already contacted other parents about the newspaper’s report. “An example of how communication didn’t work at all,” says Offe.
“Totally absurd”
Other parents talk about difficult to understand decisions when it comes to specific cases of infection. For example, a single mother from Cologne reports that the health department quarantined her without symptoms after visiting her parents and a case of corona occurred in her home. His son, on the other hand, who was with his grandparents, is not subject to quarantine and continues to go to school.
A Hamburg parent and a SPIEGEL employee experienced a different variant: After a Covid 19 disease was diagnosed in their son’s class at a district school, the entire class had to be quarantined. But what should happen to siblings, what should happen to parents? The school couldn’t answer that. “They said the health department would be in contact,” the father said. She has been waiting for this call for a week, and as a precautionary measure, she has been in isolation while her son cannot return to school.
The lack of a plan seems to have a method, confirms Julia Offe in the face of her children’s school. It’s a few miles away, but in a different district, and there was also a Corona case there. “The child was only quarantined directly next to the seat, and only in the basic class,” says the Hamburg mother. “In language courses, in art and music, the people sitting next to you were not sent home, it is totally absurd.”
