Education in NRW: No solutions for the Corona school year

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Every young person has the right to education, upbringing and individual support from school.

This is what the NRW School Act says.

In view of this obligation, one could describe the latest reports from Duisburg hotspot schools as a partial collapse of the state's educational mandate.

Several school principals warned that half of their students had completely lost their connection - because of the corona-related school closings.

No overview of learning deficits

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How can the country cope with this education crisis?

Or does the term crisis exaggerate the situation?

What about the 2.5 million schoolchildren in the country?

Now that a return to face-to-face teaching has been looming since February 22nd, such questions need to be answered.

So far, however, the decisive factor is missing: a stable data base on the extent of lockdown-related learning deficits.

Education politicians are still in the dark.

And the black and yellow state government is also responsible for this.

Months ago the SPD parliamentary group urged that the effectiveness of distance learning be scientifically researched.

But the Ministry of Education ignored the proposal.

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Nevertheless, one can at least guess how the education of many students is currently going.

In January, the state parents of high schools (LEGYM) carried out a survey among parents of high school students in North Rhine-Westphalia.

The result is exclusively available to WELT: According to this, around 40 percent of parents observe serious or medium-sized learning deficits and gaps in their children.

“We are therefore assuming an even greater learning gap across all school types.

If this gap is not closed, it will cause problems for our students for many years to come, ”warns LEGYM spokesman Franz-Josef Kahlen to this newspaper.

There are also strong learning deficits nationwide

There were also nationwide surveys of teachers and parents.

According to the Forsa survey, at the end of 2020 every second teacher complained about learning delays in more than half of their students.

As early as June 2020, a parent survey by the Ifo Center for Educational Economics showed that students spent only half as much time studying as before during distance learning in the first lockdown.

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All of this points to dramatic learning deficits - the majority of teachers and parents' associations (such as GEW, VBE, LEGYM) and the opposition warn.

Distance teaching cannot replace face-to-face teaching.

SPD education expert Jochen Ott told WELT that the “(partial) school closings in the past twelve months, in which some children were out of school for over six months,” would have serious consequences for many children.

After all, the students were not allowed into their schools for around nine weeks in 2020 and around eight weeks in 2021.

And that does not include previous quarantine phases for individual schools, classes or students.

From the end of February, the return to face-to-face teaching will initially only apply to students in the final grades and primary school students.

And the latter only benefit from half the classroom teaching.

Warning of excessive concern

The black and yellow state government and a minority of the teachers 'associations (especially the teachers' association NRWL) warn against it not to dramatize the situation.

NRWL President Andreas Bartsch emphasizes to WELT that so far there have only been "a good week of missed lessons this school year".

“To speak of an educational deficit now” is not appropriate.

In earlier decades there were a number of so-called short school years “which produced missed lessons in completely different dimensions”.

Nevertheless, students at the time would have made a career later.

The success of distance teaching can only be guessed at

The Ministry of Education also draws attention to the functioning of classes during school closings.

Distance teaching is now on a par with face-to-face teaching, the services provided there can be assessed, and “an increasing professionalization of distance teaching in increasingly better equipped schools”, a spokesman said on request.

Nobody denies increasing professionalism either.

But how successful digital teaching really is and how much the learning success suffers from technical problems and a lack of control - nobody knows either.

Here too, the opposition has urged that learning be scientifically supported at a distance.

But the school minister also refused to accept this request.

And so there is plenty of room for guesswork when it comes to the extent of corona-related learning deficits.

Land relies on voluntary learning

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The ministry suspects that the residues are rather manageable - the measures intended to remedy the situation are correspondingly small.

Gebauer is funding additional educational offers in leisure time and during the holidays with 36 million euros until summer 2022.

Teachers 'and parents' associations consider this to be underfunded.

In addition, all of these offers are voluntary.

Those who do not register will not be funded.

On the other hand, recognized experts such as Bettina Kohlrausch, Professor of Educational Sociology in Paderborn, recommend large-format and binding help.

She advertises to WELT “for a fast, high-quality expansion of the all-day offer.

This would mean that children and young people would have more learning time available in the long term.

For this, however, the full day would have to be offered by qualified staff in a didactically demanding manner, so that individual support is actually possible ”.

This is in line with most teacher unions and the opposition.

The SPD education politician Ott also calls for an "education day".

That means: The afternoon care should also be used temporarily in order to support each child individually.

Ott hopes to find the staff required for this with “student teachers and students of other subjects on a large scale”.

The catch: This not only requires money, but also personnel and complex organization - which is why it is rejected by the ministry.

There, as in so many federal states, one is toying with another idea: staying seated more often.

At the Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs in January, Minister Gebauer approved the proposal that it should be easier for students to repeat the school year.

For example, by increasing the maximum number of grade repetitions allowed per student.

Forced sitting: painful and useless

The opposition is now asking whether an unprecedented avalanche of sedentarians is rolling towards schools.

The disadvantages of staying seated would be obvious: Higher-performing students would continue to study in their familiar class group, and less proficient students would have to get used to a new environment.

At least, so the experts demand, you have to set an upper limit for repeaters per class.

What research thinks about staying seated can be read in the meta-study "Repeating classes - expensive and ineffective" by educational scientist Klaus Klemm.

Repetitions of grades therefore do not serve the cognitive development of those affected.

Klemm rejects staying seated "as an ineffective measure".

Especially since the psychological and social damage in those who remained seated was proven.

Not only did they often experience humiliation, but they usually also lost confidants and friends with the class.

The educational sociologist Bettina Kohlrausch warns that repeating grades is “not a fair solution”.

This, she says, would shift responsibility for the consequences of the school closings on the children and young people.

"And they really can't help it."

On the contrary, she argues that “no child should be forced to repeat the school year this year”.

The opposition and many teachers' associations also join in.

Forced sitting down as a way out of the educational crisis creates a two-class society in schools, warns Jochen Ott.

Because "the learning differences have probably never been as great as they are today".