Good morning dear readers,
That sounded like cooperation, like departure. After that something really moves forward when the FDP occupies the Ministry of Education. Everything should get better – that was Stark-Watzinger’s message. A year has passed since then. And this much is clear today: Little has changed, little progress. Cooperation with the federal states is faltering.
The Minister of Education is the focus these days. Stark-Watzinger’s education summit ended yesterday – without concrete results. Her department could send a message to the country: How to speed up important projects if the political will is there. How the young generation is viewed. And that the liberals are finally showing how pragmatic they can govern.
Instead, the ministry is currently a symbol of political inertia.
There is a lot to do: The PISA studies have had meager results for the Federal Republic for years – the next ones are expected at the end of this year. The differences in educational policy between the federal states become injustices: The average high school grades differ widely, but the high school graduates use them to apply for the same university places.
The second digital pact for schools will be without an evaluation of the first pact (where digitization was to be promoted with a lot of money from the federal coffers, which was hardly used). The expansion of all-day schools was supported, but the funds for ongoing operations were hardly increased. And education in Germany is still extremely dependent on the origin of the parents: Less than 20 percent of school leavers with parents without a high school diploma still manage to go to university.
But the current crisis in education policy is particularly evident in the energy allowance for students. She was announced by Stark-Watzinger last September. The idea: Students and technical students should get 200 euros from the state to be able to cushion the consequences of high energy prices. The Federal Statistical Office has calculated that around 40 percent of students are at risk of poverty. In September 2021, as written, the draft was presented.
And since when has the website been activated for applying for the benefit? Since yesterday. Wednesday, March 14, 2022. Seven months after the announcement.
Around 3.5 million people are entitled to the 200 euros, nobody has received anything so far. Whereby: A few thousand of them took part in a test program, and some of the money was already paid out. But that is the only mini-success that Stark-Watzinger has so far achieved in terms of an energy flat rate. “The state doesn’t care about the needs of the students”, writes my colleague Tom Hoops in his commentary. At least when it comes to the energy flat rate, one has to say: Stark-Watzinger brutally let the students down.
So that everything will be better in the future, there was a meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday “Education Summit” of the ministry. Stark-Watzinger had loaded and previously announced full-bodied that she would become one with it “establish a new form and culture of cooperation with all those involved. you want one “Team building” and therefore also asked her 16 country colleagues from the ministries of education to do so.
But most waved them off, only two of them appeared. Astrid-Sabine Busse from Berlin and Ties Rabe from Hamburg. The majority of the remaining state ministers let Stark-Watzinger run up. They accused her of insufficient preparation for the summit. The Hessian CDU Minister of Education Alexander Lotz told the industry service “Table Media”: “Neither the date nor the format and content were agreed with us.” On Deutschlandfunk, Stark-Watzinger explained reassuringly that all of this was just the start of a journey, not the end.
This path is currently leading into the unknown. This is too little. Ironically, Ties Rabe, the Hamburg SPD man, said: “The states alone without the impulse of the federal government will not solve the distribution problem.” It was about the federal government’s start-up opportunities program, which could start in 2024 and is intended to support disadvantaged students.
It can hardly be said more clearly: The countries are asking the minister for more leadership. On her own peak.
Naturally: Education policy in Germany is a matter for the federal states. And the individual sovereigns are very reluctant to let Berlin dictate which compulsory reading must be read in the advanced German courses, which math problems must be mastered without a pocket calculator. But the financing framework could be set by Stark-Watzinger. to make money more easily available. Combat teacher shortages with unified incentives. Present viable concepts for equal opportunities.
That could work in the education department. It could really be a departure. A signal to the country: Look here, digitization works here. Instead, education policy is bobbing along. Fragmented in federalism – without the necessary coordination from the federal government.
After the summit, Stark-Watzinger stated that a “Taskforce” from the federal, state, local authorities and science should start work. But she didn’t say what’s going to get better now. So there is only one thing left for her summit: a missed opportunity.
What’s up?
The term only became really popular during the corona pandemic, The body is now well known: in the afternoon there will be a prime ministers’ conference. This time, however, it is not about advice on a virus, but about the distribution of refugees among the different federal states – and their accommodation. Other topics include energy policy and bottlenecks in the supply of medicines. In the afternoon, Prime Ministers Stephan Weil (SPD) and Hendrik Wüst (CDU) will appear before the press and announce what the sovereigns have agreed on.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz is meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Berlin today. The talks are supposed to be about cooperation between Germany and Israel – security policy issues could also be discussed. Netanyahu is under pressure in his home country: there have been large-scale demonstrations in Israel for days against a planned judicial reform.
For many weeks there have been demonstrations in our neighboring country: The French are furious that President Macron wants to gradually raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. Now Parliament could decide today on the pension reform – against which about two-thirds of the French are. Anger at the President is likely to grow. “My colleague Lisa Becke has already explained here why things are simmering in the country.”
