display

Hanover (dpa / lni) - Lower Saxony is sticking to the existing rules for school closings in the Corona crisis for the time being, even if the planned federal emergency brake allows a more generous practice.

This means that schools, as before, with an incidence of 100 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants, will largely switch to distance learning within seven days, the Ministry of Culture announced in Hanover on Wednesday.

Primary schools and final classes, which remain open in the alternating model, are excluded.

According to the current status, the federal emergency brake is only supposed to make school closings mandatory from a seven-day incidence of 200.

Lower Saxony will, in all likelihood, stipulate its own, stricter practice in the new state corona regulation, which will apply from Monday, for a further three weeks.

However, the systematic test strategy that has just started in Lower Saxony's schools is also being monitored and analyzed, said a spokesman for the Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs.

First conclusions, also with a view to a possibly more generous opening practice, are only reliably possible in about three weeks, when the test practice has become familiar.

display

Since the beginning of the week, pupils, teachers and other school staff have been obliged to carry out a self-test twice a week before going to school.

To this end, the country has procured millions of test kits that are handed out to the students.

The obligation to test has been included in the state's Corona regulation.

The Association of Lower Saxony Teachers (VNL / VDR) called on the state government to stick to the previous practice.

"We categorically reject the nationwide regulation adopted by the federal government to close schools only when the incidence value is exceeded above 200," said the state chairman of the association, Torsten Neumann.

The protection for students and teachers is no longer guaranteed.

"Classrooms, schools and the way to school must finally be recognized by politics as a pandemic driver, everything else is dangerously unrealistic."

© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210414-99-201716 / 2

display

Rules of the Ministry of Culture for school operations after the Easter holidays

VNL / VDR-PM