In Berlin, learning at home is likely to be extended by a week after the Christmas break. School Senator Sandra Scheeres (SPD) told the Tagesspiegel on request. “At the moment I am assuming that we in Berlin will have to extend the phase of school-guided learning at home until January 17th,” said Scheeres.
Exempt from this should be the graduation-relevant age groups for which alternate classes should also take place during this time. She regrets that such an approach will result in additional burdens for the parents. She, too, would like the pupils, especially in the primary level and the final-relevant classes, to be able to switch back to face-to-face lessons as quickly as possible. But that cannot be decided independently of the infection process.
The question of school openings should be the subject of deliberations between the Federal Chancellor and the Prime Minister next week. Only then could Berlin reliably show another perspective up to the winter holidays, said Scheeres. Up to now it was planned that only “non-attendance days” would take place from January 4th to 11th.
Nationwide, the question of what will happen to the schools is hotly debated. Baden-Württemberg’s Minister of Education, Susanne Eisenmann (CDU), has now pleaded for a quick resumption of face-to-face teaching. She wants to open at least daycare centers and elementary schools for face-to-face teaching after the lockdown from January 11th, and one also has to look at grades 5 to 7 and the final grades – “regardless of the incidence,” as she said the dpa.
Other countries are also extending school closings
Among other things, SPD leader Saskia Esken criticized this in the newspapers of the Funke media group. Esken said she lacks “any imagination” as to how the goal of reducing the seven-day incidence to below 50 per 100,000 inhabitants could be achieved by January 11. In this respect, an announcement like Eisenmann’s was “downright irresponsible”. It must “finally stop that classroom teaching and digital education are played off against each other”. Esken announced a third federal and state school summit in January.
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Bremen and Hamburg, on the other hand, have already announced that they will initially suspend compulsory attendance for one week longer than January 11th. Rhineland-Palatinate also wants to stick to distance learning until January 15th. Stefanie Hubig (SPD), Minister of Education of Rhineland-Palatinate and chairman of the Conference of Ministers of Education, told the “Rheinische Post” that as an education politician she still had the goal of “getting back to school as soon as possible – first of all if necessary also only for younger children and the graduating classes ”.
In response to a request from Tagesspiegel, the Ministry of Education in Saarland also said, “Due to the disadvantages that many students experience through distance learning, the goal is to return all children and young people to face-to-face teaching as soon as possible.” Depending on the pandemic situation, different scenarios are prepared.
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