Berlin / Deggendorf (dpa) – The German Teachers’ Association is skeptical of shifting school times to equalize school traffic and thus reduce the risk of infection. The Association of German Transport Companies (VDV) made a corresponding request. “That reaches its limits very quickly,” said Teachers Association President Heinz-Peter Meidinger of the German Press Agency. There are several reasons for this. The main argument, however, is: “There may be a little less going on on the buses and during the breaks, but the basic problem does not change. And the basic problem is the full class. At school they still have full classrooms.”
Even on a very practical level, the suggestion to stagger the starting times of lessons is not feasible in many places. On the one hand, the school buses in many districts also carried commuters. But even where there are purely school buses, the vehicles are already being used for other purposes outside of the standard times, “so that additional capacities, if any, can only be implemented in individual regions, but not across the board.” Shifted times would also cause new problems, for example with lunch, which would then also have to be extended.
On the other hand, in the fight against overcrowded school buses, the first cities in Schleswig-Holstein are now focusing on equalizing the start of school times. In Flensburg, for example, 15 secondary schools agreed on staggered school start times in September. After much hesitation, Lübeck now also wants to set up a round table.
Meidinger’s counter-suggestion: “If you really want to do effective health protection when the number of infections is rising sharply, you actually have to switch to alternating operations again, that is, halve classes and half in one week or on one day and the other half in the other Teaching week or the other day at school. “
The current course of politics was criticized by Meidinger, who was director of a grammar school in Deggendorf in Lower Bavaria until the summer holidays and who also represented the teachers at the head of the German Philological Association for many years: “To do nothing and to keep the schools open for the devil nobody understands anymore. ” The existing step-by-step plans would have to be backed up with binding incidence limit values. “Just to say: We have a step-by-step plan, and no matter what values are achieved, we do not act – that is grossly negligent.”
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