The winter holidays are over, after a week’s break, school starts again on Monday. The second semester brings changes: new assistants start in some schools. They should relieve the teachers.
Erfurt (dpa/th) – After the half-time break in the winter holidays, around 250,000 schoolchildren in Thuringia are starting their classes again. A few new additions are pedagogical assistants at the schools, who are supposed to relieve the teachers. According to the Thuringian Ministry of Education, the new assistants can help with homework, help study groups or take on care tasks during breaks. A spokesman said the focus is currently on support for the care of children and young people with a migration background.
So far, the educational assistants have only been hired sporadically. “Of course we hope for more demand,” said the spokesman. The first assistants had already received a crash course at the beginning of February and are now fully committed to their new job at the beginning of the second half of the school year.
In Thuringia, the first half of the school year ended on February 10th with the distribution of certificates. There was a week of winter vacation in the Free State. In other federal states, the half-time break is sometimes shorter – or longer, as in neighboring Saxony, where the students can catch their breath until February 26th.
