Five district parent councils from the south and east of Brandenburg are calling for a round table to look for ways out of the educational misery in the state. “The shortage of teachers, the slow digitization of schools and the learning deficits identified by various studies pose particular challenges for society,” says an open letter to Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke (SPD), who the district parent councils of Cottbus, Elbe-Elster, Frankfurt (Oder), Oberspreewald-Lausitz and Spree-Neisse have written and published. “We must all act quickly now, otherwise a whole generation of students could be lost!”
Demand for a broad alliance
According to the parents’ representatives, a social contract is needed for the education sector in the country: “In the next two to five years everyone will have to lend a hand: Unfortunately, the classes will be bigger, the teachers have to work more, politicians have to ensure that the working conditions for the Teachers are getting better, the school authorities have to improve the equipment more quickly and parents have to do more to fulfill their educational duties.”
The open letter refers to serious deficits in the state’s education system: “The IQB education study with the disastrous results for Brandenburg has been available since October 2022. What has happened since then? Although time is short, the Ministry of Education has not presented any concrete measures to date on how to make up for the learning deficits in primary schools,” the five district parents’ councils reprimanded. In the IQB study, fourth graders in Brandenburg had the second worst performance in German and math compared to all federal states.
Nowhere else have pupils deteriorated as much as in Brandenburg
And that’s not all: since 2016, no other federal state has seen such a sharp drop in performance in both subjects as Brandenburg, although significantly more money than before had been pumped into the education system in the same period. “In Brandenburg, people celebrate because around a third of all students have access to a digital device provided by the school authority,” the fire letter continues. “What about the other two-thirds?” It doesn’t matter to the student whether the ministry, the districts or the cities are responsible for the supply of end devices.
In Brandenburg, the districts are responsible for this, which leads to a patchwork quilt with the risk of unequal educational opportunities: According to a nationwide survey published by the Ministry of Education at the request of this newspaper, Barnim and Havelland bring up the rear when it comes to equipping schools with tablets, laptops and computers in the country. In Barnim, there is a school device for 4.3 students, in Havelland for 4.2. The national average is one device for 3 students.
The leader is the Prignitz, where there is a device for 1.9 pupils. With one device for 3.1 students, Potsdam is in the middle. The independent cities of Cottbus (2.5) and Brandenburg an der Havel (2.4) have equipped their schools with end devices significantly better than the state capital. In Havelstadt, which is the nationwide leader, 90.9 percent of the schools also have fast WiFi (more than 50 Mbit/s). At the bottom are the Prignitz with fast WiFi in 37.9 percent of the schools and the Havelland with a share of 42.2 percent.
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