[ad_1]
What no one wanted for months is coming: daycare centers and schools will be closed nationwide as of Wednesday. Contacts must be “significantly restricted” here, as Chancellor Angela Merkel emphasized after consultations with the prime minister on Sunday. Children should “be cared for at home whenever possible.”
Merkel has thus prevailed. A few days earlier, in an emotional speech, he called for stricter crown measures for schools, distance or alternate lessons “or whatever.” The Conference of Ministers of Education, by contrast, had resisted extending the Christmas holidays until recently. However, some education ministers had already softened or dropped the “classroom teaching priority” mantra on their own.
For days it has been certain that kindergartens and schools at the Saxony crown hotspot will be closed from Monday. North Rhine-Westphalia also suspends compulsory attendance after immense pressure from parent-teacher associations.
After joint resolutions by the federal and state governments on Sunday, education ministers must now commit to a clear and uniform line, and a radical course:
-
Schools are generally closed from December 16 to January 10 or compulsory attendance will be suspended. This period overlaps with the Christmas holidays. The education ministers had previously decided (almost all) to bring the start of the holidays across the country to Friday.
-
There must be emergency care in daycare centers and schools. Prime Minister Markus Söder stressed that the offer should only be used in an emergency, “if it cannot be arranged otherwise.” However, unlike spring, the daycare is not specifically intended for the children of parents with systemically important jobs.
-
Schools must find regulations on distance education. However, separate regulations can be made for graduation classes. Söder emphasized that the goal was to preserve educational equality in any case and, if necessary, to postpone exam dates so that students would not have to take a “stress high school diploma” or a “school completion certificate. secondary stress “.
That means: whether schools maintain distance learning from Wednesday as recommended or advance the Christmas break, ultimately it depends on the state. Because despite all the resolutions, education remains a matter for the federal states. How they actually implement the regulations on the site will be different, as already shown on Sunday immediately after the federal-state switch.
Schools are closed on Monday or Wednesday or …
-
Bayern Nurseries and schools for all age groups will close from Wednesday.
-
In North Rhine-Westphalia It remains with the decision announced on Friday to lift compulsory attendance from Monday, as announced by Prime Minister Armin Laschet. At NRW, parents have already been asked not to take their children to daycare or school if possible. However, Laschet spoke of a “guarantee of care.” Parents who would have to leave their children in charge could continue to do so. In schools, however, there are no lessons as usual.
-
Hamburg temporarily removes compulsory attendance from December 16 to January 10 and replaces it with other school offerings. The schools will remain open until the Christmas holidays, according to school authorities. However, parents must decide whether their children should study at school or at home. Attendance is still mandatory for exam situations. School authorities wanted to “promptly report” how things will continue after January 10.
-
Rhineland-Palatinate suspends school attendance from Wednesday, as Prime Minister Malu Dreyer (SPD) said on Sunday. The schools remained open for students who could not be cared for at home until the start of the holidays on Friday. After the holidays, there will be distance learning from January 4 to January 15.
-
Baden-Württemberg closes schools and kindergartens as of Wednesday. In concrete terms, this means that the students in their final year will be taught remotely until the start of the regular Christmas holidays on December 23rd. Schoolchildren from the other years are sent on early vacations. According to the information, children are entitled to emergency care if their employer “deems it indispensable” to both parents or single parents. This applies to both face-to-face workplaces and home office workplaces. Children who need care for the well-being of their children also have the right.
-
Schleswig-Holstein It closes schools on Wednesday, but the school authorities asked parents: »If you can arrange it, please leave your children at home on Mondays and Tuesdays and use the option of an informal compulsory attendance leave. You don’t have to worry about your kids missing important material at school. “As of December 14, only those exams that cannot be postponed can be written, for example because they have to be brought to Abitur.
-
In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Face-to-face teaching in grades through sixth grade should be possible in principle in strict crown closure. Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig (SPD) said on Sunday that she recommends leaving children at home whenever possible. Compulsory attendance could also be suspended after the Christmas holidays, and they could instead learn from home. Therefore, nurseries should also remain open in principle. Here, too, Schwesig spoke out in favor of parents leaving their children at home if possible. Beginning Monday, stricter measures are in place for seventh graders in much of the state. These must then communicate over the Internet. These measures are initially planned until January 10.
Keep restrictions “as short as possible”
Baden-Württemberg’s education minister, Susanne Eisenmann, spoke of the measures as an “inevitable” step. “If all social life in Germany is to be shut down, it goes without saying that we also have to make a contribution to minimize contact in schools and kindergartens,” Eisenmann said.
At the same time, however, he demanded that nurseries and schools “reopen as a priority.” Politicians must not lose sight of the fact that school closings are associated with numerous negative consequences for society, especially for children and young people. Restrictions on regular operations should be “as short as possible” and limited to the period until January 10.
Will that work?
It is not yet clear how long the new shutdown will last. In several federal states, the holidays anyway last until January 10. In others, the vacation schedule provides for two or two and a half weeks away from school. Also in this case, “homeschooling” had already been partially announced until the 10th. But then? Söder did not want to promise that the usual operations of the nursery and school would start again on January 10: “Even after that, I cannot imagine that everything will just continue normally. The virus does not adhere to the data.
The situation is unlikely to improve by January 10, according to teachers’ associations. More urgently, they demanded that all actors in the school immediately set the stage for the time after Christmas break. “Schools must have the freedom to continue developing concepts for alternative and distance learning,” demanded the president of the Education and Science Union (GEW), Marlis Tepe.
In contrast to the first shutdown in spring, Merkel and the prime ministers made it clear this time that they understand what they are asking of mothers, fathers and children. Berlin’s head of government, Michael Müller (SPD), spoke of “drastic measures for everyone, for families, of course.” He reminded the many single parents who could not easily arrange alternative care. The decisions were made “not out of care,” he said.
Politicians learned from the experiences of spring when kindergartens and schools closed overnight for several weeks, Müller said. This time, parents and schools will have at least a day or two to prepare for the new closure. Even if there are no particular anomalies in the schools, there are still contacts and new infections in this environment. For the moment, all of this should be avoided, Müller said.
“1155”
Söder declared that it was “five minutes to twelve.” “That is why we no longer want to do things by halves, but to act decisively and play it safe before Christmas.” In order not to leave parents alone worrying about childcare, employers should also get one when daycare and school close. Make a contribution. Söder and Merkel called for “generous home office solutions whenever possible” or, if possible, holidays from the company.
The joint resolution also addresses additional vacations: “Additional opportunities are being created for parents to take paid vacations to care for their children during the mentioned period.” Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) is already working on regulations for additional vacations for the upcoming shutdown affected parents, he said.
The initiatives of parents “Families in crisis” and “Children need children”, which were born after the tensions of the first closure, warned before the new resolutions: “We support that everyone must make an appropriate contribution in the fight against Covid-19. But it must be clearly stated that many children and families can no longer bear any additional contribution, “says Stephanie Schläfer of” Children need children.
Udo Beckmann, director of the Association for Education and Parenting (VBE), warned of ongoing technical problems in schools. Comprehensive hybrid teaching is not feasible. “We are facing the same problems as in March: the children who should receive special support by keeping schools open are now again those who do not have their own room at home, much less their own digital device.”
Politicians have made some efforts in recent months to advance digitization, but you can’t talk about coverage at the national level. The state association of parents of secondary school pupils of North Rhine-Westphalia also sees poorly prepared schools and asks indignantly: “If there is no basic master plan for schools in North Rhine-Westphalia, when?”
With material from dpa, AFP and Reuters
