Whatever the outcome of the House of Representatives election in autumn: Hardly anyone in Berlin would bet a cent on the SPD to lead the education department again. After a record of 25 years at the top with a sobering record, social democracy is considered to be exhausted in terms of school policy. That’s it?
Whoever would shout “yes” at this point probably doesn’t know Maja Lasić. The spokeswoman for education policy for the SPD parliamentary group does not make an exhausted impression. On the contrary: with a lot of vigor, she is currently in the process of sharpening the school part of the election program before the draft is to be adopted in April. Because Lasić is of the opinion that her party is far from over in terms of educational policy. So, let’s go.
“I know it is not easy, but I still want to tell you what social democracy has to offer in this area,” the biochemist adds. For Lasić, who came from Bosnia at the age of 14 during the war in Yugoslavia, this means, as she says, first and foremost: creating equal opportunities so that more young people like them can make progress.
With this goal she is not alone on the school political stage: The FDP and CDU would not put it much differently, their competitors from the left and the Greens have a similar agenda. That is why the Social Democratic MP from Wedding has to explain what the SPD would do differently.
There is, for example, the matter of the law of neutrality: the left and the Greens want to tip it, which would mean that Muslim teachers could in future stand in front of the class wearing headscarves. The previous labor court judgments point in this direction anyway. Lasić nevertheless agrees with her party that the law should be saved.
“The state has the right to profess neutrality”
“Nobody can stop me from believing that the state has the right to profess its neutrality,” says the 41-year-old, who is in line with the Senator for the Interior. If you fail before the labor courts, you just have to take a different path – for example by making it more precise in the law. It may have to be made clearer when there is a risk to the peace of the school so that not every single case has to be renegotiated. In any case, there is a “ditch” to the current coalition partners.
The gap in attitudes towards high school is less large. Just like the Left and the Greens, the SPD is aiming for longer learning together, and the existence of high schools is only grudgingly accepted by key forces in the SPD. The three coalition partners have been struggling for a long time with the probationary year, which enables high schools to transfer weaker students to secondary schools.
The probationary year is up for grabs
Instead, the implication is that they should keep all who ingested them. The grammar schools counter this by saying that they have little influence on admission because of the free parental voting rights. The probationary year is therefore an important regulator. Lasić mentions as a possible compromise to orientate oneself on Brandenburg, where instead of a probationary year there is a two-day trial lesson or an aptitude test. This point is still open in the election manifesto.
The SPD is next on other points – for example with regard to the goal of improving performance. Here she can build on the recommendations of the expert commission of the Kiel researcher Olaf Köller, which stated that schools must deal more consistently with the performance data of their students.
The SPD follows the expert commission
Disastrous results in the comparative tests should no longer disappear in the drawer. Lasić speaks of “accountability” and of the fact that additional funds – something from the bonus program – must necessarily be linked to school development. That it is wrong to “always just pump in money” without looking at the result – the member of the Köller Commission also agrees with this assessment and adds self-critically: “We completely failed in controlling.”
The program remains more vague with digitization. In addition, it says that “our state-owned service provider for digital education opens up space for the digital development of schools”. But since this has not worked in the past, this admission gives little hope. So should a new service provider come in? “That would be a question of the next coalition agreement,” says Lasić. Perhaps, analogous to the “School Building Task Force”, a “Digitalization Task Force” with a strong partner, like the Howoge for school building, would be needed.
“ndH” – a stigmatizing abbreviation for migrants?
The SPD wants to get away from the controversial term “pupil of non-German language of origin”. So far, this so-called “ndH indicator”, ie the proportion of students with a migration history, was decisive for the allocation of additional teachers for language training – and for many parents it was also important when choosing a school. This indicator is not meaningful, but “stigmatizing”, says the SPD: It therefore wants to move away from naming the ndH quota and instead publish the performance data more transparently than before: “That will provoke resistance,” says Lasić.
This is also to be expected in other points of the election program – for example with the introduction of a bachelor’s degree in teaching. So far, for example, teachers have attended the same math seminars as future computer scientists. The SPD wants the educators to stay among themselves and study their subjects in the “School of Education” – a step back in the direction of the former college of education. In order to counter the great lack of interested parties for the vocational school teaching position, there should also be a dual model course in cooperation with universities of applied sciences – this would also be a completely new course.
The aim is to make the teaching staff official
Other points in the election manifesto are to be expected, including the commitment to serving the teaching staff. In addition, the SPD wants to increase the reserve reserve “in the most difficult situations” to up to 110 percent. So far it has been bobbing at only three percent, which is due to the savings targets of previous years – also such an SPD legacy that Lasić does not allow himself to be deprived of the courage to start over. So will the SPD try again for the school department?
“Departments are distributed in coalition negotiations, it would be premature to ponder them now,” says Lasić. But she wants to make one thing clear: “If competitors believe that they can contest the election campaign by pointing the finger in the direction of 25 years of SPD education policy, this will not be enough.” Social democracy is ready for the election campaign.
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