The IT industry association Bitkom calls for clarity for schools when it comes to digitization. As Bitkom President Achim Berg states, the digital pact for schools will expire in exactly one year – on May 16, 2024. The future of the funding program is still unclear. Berg appeals that the federal and state governments speed up their talks to give schools planning security for their digital projects.
Digital Pact 2.0 agreed in the coalition agreement
“The question of follow-up financing and the design of a successor model in the form of the Digital Pact 2.0 is (…) still unresolved,” explains Berg. “In its coalition agreement, the traffic light government has committed to launching a digital pact 2.0 – but there has been little progress so far.”
School authorities and schools need long-term planning security for the financing of digitization projects, otherwise there is a risk of the digitization of schools coming to a standstill again.
From Bitkom’s point of view, German schools are still lagging behind when it comes to digitization – both in terms of technical equipment and digital teaching and learning materials and in strengthening the digital skills of teachers and IT administration. The association estimates that Germany’s schools lag behind countries like Denmark by 20 years.
Second pact with fewer bureaucratic hurdles
With a digital pact 2.0, bureaucratic hurdles in the allocation of funds would have to be removed, explains Berg: “The rapid digitization of Germany’s classrooms can only succeed through nationwide coordinated minimum standards and a simplified application process for funding.” It has been shown that the funds from the first digital pact flowed slowly. By the end of 2022, less than EUR 1 billion of the available EUR 5 billion had been accessed – over a period of three and a half years.
There is still a large gap between the approval and the outflow of funds. The funds from the first digital pact will only be able to take effect with a delay.
(Bild: Digital Pact School)
To ensure that the funds from the first digital pact from 2019 for the schools do not expire, Lower Saxony, among others, recently launched a first-come-first-served procedure. Schools can apply for remaining funding even if they have already received funding from the Digital Pact. The timing of the application will determine who will (once) receive funds.
In March of this year, 80 percent of the digital pact funds were considered tied.
How should digitization be implemented in our schools? How is the coronavirus pandemic affecting what is happening? What was achieved in the 2020/2021 school year – what happened next in 2021/2022? This is what our series of articles would like to shed light on.
How should digitization be implemented in our schools? How has it gone so far? This is what our series of articles would like to shed light on.
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