Two full pandemic years with school closures had to pass before the Ministers of Education lent their ears to the students.

The #WirWerdenLaut online petition was needed, which has now been signed by almost 128,000 people and is making clear demands on the Minister of Education and the Federal Minister of Education.

According to the FAZ, the federal student conference and most of the state student representatives are not entirely happy about this fire letter, in which politicians are accused of a "contamination plan".

Because they see things differently and have already been in talks with politicians in some countries.

The petition was therefore only signed by two state student representatives, the state student conference in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate.

Heike Schmoll

Political correspondent in Berlin, responsible for “Bildungswelten”.

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Perhaps it was therefore no coincidence that these two state student conferences and the student representatives from Bremen were absent from the conversation with the President of the Conference of Ministers of Education (KMK), Schleswig-Holstein's Minister of Education Karin Prien (CDU), on Tuesday evening.

The student representatives from the other 13 countries were present and Prien was visibly impressed by the constructive discussions with them.

She had already met thirteen times with the student representatives there in Schleswig-Holstein during the corona pandemic and accepted many practical suggestions, she told the FAZ on Wednesday. After the Christmas break, the students also asked for tests for those who had been vaccinated and boosted, reports Prien, and they got it against the resistance of the responsible ministry for social affairs.

All student representatives agree that children and young people were not heard enough during the corona pandemic, that politics ignored them.

"The students rightly demand to be heard in good time," says Prien.

They also complained that communication was much too late, "We all have to get better here," assured the KMK President.

The KMK is currently considering regular discussion formats with students, in which the KMK Executive Committee should also be involved.

The students want to talk about recruiting teachers and teacher shortages, school social work, the digital pact and schools in times of a pandemic.

"Attacks on face-to-face classes unacceptable"

The students disagree about the face-to-face lessons.

The vast majority want to come to school, but some also worry about infections and feel extremely uncomfortable when individual teachers do not strictly follow the hygiene rules or when careless classmates put pressure on the anxious.

The student councils in the city-states refer to the children and young people from socially disadvantaged families, who have as little voice in the student councils as their parents do in the parents' councils.