Düsseldorf (dpa / lnw) – In the dispute over concepts for school operations with rapidly increasing corona numbers, the North Rhine-Westphalia City Council has asked the state government for a nationwide uniform step-by-step plan. “The fact that the school ministry has so far only insisted on face-to-face teaching and rejects an alternation model with distance teaching is incomprehensible and fraught with risk,” said the chairman of the North Rhine-Westphalia City Council, Bielefeld’s mayor Pit Clausen (SPD), of the German press agency.
The dispute over school operations in Solingen shows that there are unresolved issues between cities and the country. “I see considerable unrest in numerous NRW cities about the state’s attitude because the regulations are not flexible enough,” said Clausen. Even if the schools are not yet corona hotspots, more and more students and teachers have to be in quarantine.
The black and yellow NRW state government had forbidden the city of Solingen to halve the classes at the secondary schools because of the high number of new corona infections and to teach the students alternately at home and in the classrooms. School Minister Yvonne Gebauer (FDP) named the reason for fairness in education. According to the ordinance of the NRW Ministry of Education, a school can only apply for distance learning when all other options have been exhausted.
The school minister must provide the cities with practical measures so that schools can react appropriately to increasing numbers of infections, said Clausen. Hesse and Lower Saxony, for example, have already taken precautions with a tiered regulation. “The country should take this as a model,” said Clausen. In Hesse, for example, there are four levels, depending on the infection situation, from adapted to restricted regular operation to a change from face-to-face and distance teaching and finally only distance teaching.
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