Shortly before the start of the school year, many questions are unanswered: Will there be guidelines for a possible corona wave in autumn? How does the new minister feel about protective masks? And how quickly can the teacher shortage be eliminated?
Düsseldorf (dpa / lnw) – The new North Rhine-Westphalian school minister Dorothee Feller (CDU) informed on Thursday (1 p.m.) about the general conditions for the coming school year. After six and a half weeks of summer vacation, classes will start again on August 10th for most of the approximately 2.5 million schoolchildren in NRW. Only the approximately 171,000 first graders are allowed to start school one day later.
It is eagerly awaited whether Corona rules will be defined again for the new school year. It is clear that the children and young people will be taught in their schools again and not in distance learning at home. That was not always guaranteed in the pandemic years. At the beginning of April, the obligation to wear masks in schools in North Rhine-Westphalia was dropped and shortly afterwards, at the beginning of the Easter holidays, the obligation to carry out tests as well.
The new minister has brought forward the traditional school year press conference by a week so teachers, parents and students can prepare for what’s to come sooner than usual. NRW was the first federal state to start the summer holidays at the end of June.
Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU) recently emphasized: “There should no longer be widespread closures of daycare centers and schools.” According to the current federal legal situation, it is no longer possible to close schools, Feller added. She set up a Corona coordination staff in her house, in which the Ministry of Health was immediately involved for shorter decision-making processes.
The SPD opposition is calling for all daycare and school children to be tested for the corona virus in the first two weeks after the summer holidays and for schools to be given clear step-by-step plans as to when they can take which corona protection measures on their own responsibility. In addition, the federal government should create the legal basis to be able to react again with a mask requirement in emergencies.
In addition to concerns about a new corona wave in autumn, the chronic shortage of skilled workers in schools is another urgent construction site. Because, despite increased spending on schools and additional teaching jobs, the gap between available teaching positions and those actually filled has widened. While 1.9 percent of the positions in NRW were still vacant at the beginning of the past legislative period in 2017, the figure is now 2.7 percent. On June 1 of this year, 4,369 of around 160,120 teaching positions were vacant, according to figures from the Ministry of Education.
In their coalition agreement, the CDU and the Greens have promised to bring an additional 10,000 teachers to the schools and to raise the starting salary for all teachers to A 13. The SPD calls for this to be implemented quickly.
