In mathematics, schoolchildren in Germany and other European countries have built up learning deficits of ten to 13 weeks of learning by the end of primary school during the pandemic.

At Hamburg schools, the proportion of high-performing elementary school students has decreased by almost ten percent - while the proportion of underperforming students has increased by a good ten percent.

This is the result of the MINT young talent barometer of the technical and scientific academy acatech and the Joachim Herz Foundation, which was published on Wednesday.

Heike Schmoll

Political correspondent in Berlin, responsible for “Bildungswelten”.

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The research also shows that teachers have not fully exploited the possibilities of digital teaching during the lockdown phases: guided, independent project work, a method that could have been useful especially for home learning, was used by only 16 percent of STEM teachers .

The vast majority, on the other hand, transferred their classroom teaching one-to-one to digital.

“In recent months, much has been speculated about the impact of the pandemic on STEM education.

The MINT young talent barometer now confirms some of the concerns expressed,” said Olaf Köller, study leader and director of the Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education (IPN).

Joint efforts are now needed.

On the one hand, further progress must be made in digitization in schools - both in terms of equipment and the skills of teachers, school management and students.

Use digital media sensibly

On the other hand, it must be ensured that STEM education can quickly recover from the virus.

"Long-Covid in MINT education must be prevented at all costs," says Köller.

Simply transferring face-to-face teaching into the digital space is not enough.

The sensible use of digital media goes far beyond that.

"In order to advance digitization in schools, we need further training for teachers on the one hand, and on the other hand working with digital tools must be anchored in the teacher training course," says Nina Lemmens, board member of the Joachim Herz Foundation.

According to the study, the area of ​​tertiary education has coped better with the effects of the pandemic: In a survey of almost 6000 master’s students in the subjects mathematics, computer science and physics presented in the MINT Young Talent Barometer, three quarters of those surveyed rated the crisis management of their university with the grade “very good" or "good".

The query related primarily to information management and the availability of contact persons at the university.

The survey also shows that higher education will continue to be more digital in the future.

81 percent of mathematics students and even 94 percent of computer science students reject a complete return to traditional face-to-face teaching.

However, only very few respondents would like purely digital teaching.

Combined formats such as "blended learning", face-to-face phases with digital elements and hybrid formats are particularly popular with STEM students.

"German universities have proven to be particularly resilient during the Covid-19 crisis - a functioning digital infrastructure was once again an important factor," said the President of the acatech Academy, Jan Wörner.

The advantages of digitization should now also be better received in the primary and secondary levels of the education system.

The STEM subjects in particular would benefit from this.

Their content could be communicated very clearly with digital support.

The MINT young talent barometer confirmed that children from families with a migration background are more than 70 competence points behind in mathematics in the fifth grade compared to children without a migration background.

Translated into school years, this means a performance disadvantage of up to two school years.

The differences in performance do not increase in the further course of education, but they cannot be reduced by the school system.