Classes begin again in North Rhine-Westphalia on Wednesday. In the 2022/23 school year, too, the pandemic, shortage of staff and problems with equipment pose challenges.
Classes started again this Wednesday for around 2.5 million schoolchildren in the most populous state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The coastal states of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Schleswig-Holstein will follow on Monday (15 August) as the first federal state to end the summer holidays. Then the new school year begins in Hamburg, Berlin and Brandenburg. In Bayern School doesn’t start again until mid-September.
With 171,000 children starting school in NRW, school enrollment can also fall on Thursday. The 2022/23 school year is the fourth under pandemic conditions. The new NRW school minister Dorothee Feller had emphasized about two weeks ago with a view to the fight against corona that there should be no closures in the beginning of the school year.
When it comes to protective measures, the CDU politician relies primarily on personal responsibility. She recommends wearing a mask voluntarily in the classroom. Parents should receive rapid corona tests so that their children can test themselves at home – on a case-by-case basis and voluntarily. On the first day of school there is also a self-test option at school.
Minister of Education: No nationwide school closures
Federal Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger once again ruled out school closures across the board. “We have to prepare everything so that it doesn’t get that far,” said the FDP politician in the ARD “Morgenmagazin”.
Teaching should also be possible using digital media if teachers are absent, but “always only to a limited extent and not school closures for months,” emphasized Stark-Watzinger. Regarding criticism of the proposals for the new Infection Protection Act, Stark-Watzinger said: “The states have every opportunity to set rules with the schools too.” It was the homework for the summer to prepare them.
Several associations and the teachers’ unions VBE and GEW urgently called for more staff. “The most important task is and remains combating the shortage of staff in the schools,” emphasized VBE country manager Stefan Behlau. Attention must also be drawn to other central tasks, warned the chair of the school management association, Antonietta Zeoli. This included, for example, school renovations and the filling of vacant school management positions.
Shortage of teachers, especially in elementary schools
The shortage of teachers is particularly serious in the elementary school sector, and the NRW teachers’ association has demanded that much more be done here. The chairman of the association, Andreas Bartsch, named efforts in digitization – equipment and further training – as well as a relief for the teachers with school administration assistants as further construction sites.
The families move alongside Corona also the gas crisis and inflation, as reported by Anke Staar from the State Parents’ Conference of North Rhine-Westphalia. She hopes that the school minister’s promise that gas will not be cut at schools during the heating period will apply.
The six-week summer holidays of the 16 German federal states are coordinated every several years by a federal state working group and decided by the Conference of Ministers of Education (KMK).
Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria always go on vacation last, because the southern German states traditionally have Whitsun holidays and a sufficiently long learning and examination period at the end of the school year should be guaranteed.
In 2023, NRW will again go on summer vacation first. Then the last day of school in the most populous federal state is already on June 21st – exactly at the beginning of the calendar summer.
First school days in the federal states after the summer holidays 2022:
- 10.8.: NRW
- 15.8.: Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Schleswig-Holstein
- 18.8.: Hamburg
- 22.8.: Berlin, Brandenburg
- 25.8.: Saxony-Anhalt, Bremen, Lower Saxony
- August 29: Saxony, Thuringia
- 05.9.: Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland
- 12.9.: Baden-Wuerttemberg
- 13.9.: Bayern
(dpa)
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