Education and participation package: Many children don’t get help

By Herbert Kordes, Lena Rumler and Lisa Seemann,
WDR

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The Montenbrucks from Duisburg are one of the families that social politicians have been talking about particularly often since the Corona crisis: The children have deteriorated enormously due to the lack of lessons at school. The grades have slipped, the transfer is in part at risk – tutoring would help here, but the family cannot afford it.

Both parents can no longer work due to illnesses, they live on sick pay, disability pension and: Hartz IV. Therefore, the children are entitled to additional financial support from the education and participation package of the federal government, BuT for short. This also finances tuition, but so far the family did not know anything about it – that would be particularly important now.

Despite legal entitlement, benefits are not received

Case in point; Research of the ARD-Magazins Monitor show, according to the evaluation of current statistics by the Federal Employment Agency: Many subsidies from the so-called BuT do not reach the majority of children and adolescents from low-income families despite legal entitlement. For example, of around two million potential beneficiaries under 15 years of age, only around 55 percent received funds from the education and participation package in the Corona year 2020.

For the first time, the Federal Employment Agency has shown the number of beneficiaries and BuT permits among Hartz IV recipients for an entire year. According to this, only 7.3 percent of all eligible students were paid for a one-day school trip last year. Learning support – i.e. tutoring – received only around 11.1 percent – although it would be particularly important for children from financially disadvantaged families. Benefits for participation in social and cultural life – including, for example, contributions to the sports club or the music school – received 14.7 percent of all eligible pupils.

No uniform statistics

The Federal Agency’s statistics only refer to children whose families live on Hartz IV and do not contain any data on eligible children and adolescents from families who receive asylum seeker benefits, housing benefit or child allowance. The Federal Employment Agency also points out that, for methodological reasons, its figures are not suitable for calculating exact utilization rates for the education and participation package. From the point of view of experts, however, they clearly show that the BuT money does not reach many children.

Experts describe the funding package, which has been in place for ten years, as a “bureaucratic monster”. In its current form, children and young people were denied equal opportunities in education and socio-cultural participation. One of the reasons: Depending on whether a family is entitled to Hartz-IV, social assistance, asylum seeker benefits, housing benefit or child allowance, either the job center, the social welfare office or another office may be responsible.

Calculated savings model?

Experts have been criticizing the education and participation package for years: “Ultimately, the complex system can only be explained with the aim of reducing the use of these legal entitlements and thereby saving money,” social scientist Stefan Sell accuses the federal government. It should be taken into account that many children and young people would not use the service at all.

Joachim Rock from the Paritätischer Wohlfahrtsverband sees it similarly: “The benefits are too restrictive, they are too low and too difficult to achieve. The pandemic simply throws children and adolescents back again, and a much higher level of support is needed than they always have Service not yet sufficiently used. ”

“The state has an obligation”

There is a legally stipulated “action requirement”, which requires the authorities to inform eligible families about the funding opportunities of the BuT. But that is exactly what often does not happen, shows the research of Monitor. Sociologist Jutta Allmendinger from the Berlin Science Center criticizes the state is not fulfilling its “obligation to deliver”. “This requirement of assistance would simply have to be changed to a requirement of security. We owe that to our children.”

The Federal Government and the Federal Employment Agency show Monitor-Question that the responsibility for the implementation of the education package lies with the municipalities. The legal hurdles for using the services have already been lowered in recent years. As part of the federal government’s Corona catch-up program, which was presented at the beginning of May, the recently resigned Family Minister Franziska Giffey also announced that learning support should now be more easily accessible for the next two years.