Protest against reorganization: Parents wonder about class sizes in the pandemic

"In a normal year we would have accepted such a measure more readily," says Markus Flacke. His son is in class 3b at the Comenius School in the north end. Flacke does not yet know which class the boy will go to next school year. Because four classes should become three next year. Parents see this as an additional burden for their children, who have already exceeded their limits during the past 16 months of the pandemic. They are particularly annoyed that their children are again expected to feel insecure, although the Hessian Minister of Education, Alexander Lorz (CDU), declared the coming school year to be a “school year of catching up” in a government statement on June 15. But instead of being able to catch up on the content and social deficits of the past year,the children would again be thwarted by the merger in their last year of primary school.

The reason for the amalgamation is the so-called class divider.

In Hesse it is 25. That is the maximum number of students in a primary school class.

The number of students divided by 25 gives the number of classes that are formed in a year.

In most cases the number of classes does not change during the school career.

If, for example, a year with 76 students is just above the limit, four classes are formed with relatively few students.

When children leave school, the crowd can slide below this limit.

In this case, the Ministry of Culture informs the school that from now on only three classes are to be formed.

Just like now at the Comenius School.

Afraid of envy debate

"It is completely normal for classes to be merged," says a spokesman for the Hessian Ministry of Culture. Something like that happens every year, and of course parents would get angry about it. The ministry can understand the displeasure. But “the process keeps happening and we don't want to stop it”. If the ministry were to exclude individual schools from class dividers, it is feared in Wiesbaden that a debate of envy would follow with other schools, which also have good arguments on their side.

In the Comenius School, on the other hand, the teachers worry about the educational consequences for the students. “At this age, the children learn primarily through relationships,” says Christian Uhling-Neumann, the acting headmaster. So with class teachers they trust and with classmates with whom they have been studying since they started school. One of the affected classes has already seen two class teacher changes in its almost three school years, the parallel class one. A number of inclusive schooled children would also be affected.

What particularly upsets the parents is that the reorganization threatens for the fourth year of school, of all things, when their children have to choose the secondary school.

After a year of homeschooling and alternating classes, that's hard enough, and the pressure is great.

If a fourth wave of pandemics comes in autumn, as more and more doctors and education politicians are warning, alternating classes and homeschooling could also be back on the agenda.

That would create further uncertainty shortly before the transition.

The prospect of further unsettling the students by breaking up the class structure annoys the parents.

In her opinion, this burden on the children could be avoided if the administration simply left the class groups as they are.

Extra millions for tutoring and sports

In order to support the children and young people in the “school year of catching up”, the state government has launched an education program worth 60 million euros. This includes tutoring and exercise programs. For the parents of the Comenius classes, maintaining the previous class structure would be more important than extra offers. "Additional material is particularly overwhelming for children who already have learning difficulties", says the chairman of the school parents' council, Jens Fritzsche.

In practice, the parents see a contradiction to the statements made by the Minister of Education and Cultural Affairs in his government statement: "The know-how of the practitioners from the schools is and will remain of inestimable value for me when it comes to making schools responsible, safe and pedagogically good ”, Alexander Lorz recently said in the state parliament.

The on-site practitioner, headmaster Uhling-Neumann, would like to leave the classes as usual.

“We needed twelve to fifteen hours specially allocated.” He could do the rest with the hours that the school had from other contingents.

Discussions are still ongoing as to whether the arguments are heavy enough to allow an exception in the Corona school year.

"I find it difficult to use the pedagogical criteria of an individual school as a basis for the assignment," says Carine Kleine-Jänsch, deputy head of the Frankfurt School Authority.

Education authorities and the ministry are concerned about setting a precedent.

Because other schools in Frankfurt have also heard that classes are to be merged there for next year.

In such a case, a parents' council has started a petition at a primary school in Darmstadt.

Even in normal times, merging classes causes frustration; in the pandemic, parents seem even less willing to accept such decisions.

Simon Rösel