Berlin On this Wednesday, the ministers of education want to connect again – a month earlier than planned. So far, all countries want to start the year with face-to-face teaching, with the exception of Thuringia. However, because of the Omikron virus variant, the new president of the Conference of Ministers of Education, Schleswig-Holstein’s Minister Karin Prien (CDU), emphasized that alternating or distance teaching was at least “possible in individual cases regionally with a corresponding infection as a last resort”.
The second major challenge, which is closely related to this, is the slow digitization of schools: the federal government’s billion-dollar aid is only called up very slowly. Federal Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (FDP) therefore wants to “sit down at the table with federal states and municipalities” in order to remove the hurdles in the digital pact, she told the Handelsblatt. Hardware and WLAN in schools as well as laptops for students and teachers are financed from the funds of the digital pact.
The Ampel coalition agreement promises to “accelerate and reduce bureaucracy”. However, it is unclear how this can work in practice. The ideas of the federal, state and local authorities differ widely. The federal and state governments blame each other for the bureaucratic hurdles in the application process.
Stark-Watzinger complains: “Complicated applications, for example, are counterproductive, a short standard procedure would be better”. The requirements are also sometimes a hindrance: “In Hesse, for example, fiber optics are a requirement, but they are not available everywhere.” And the tenders can “certainly be regulated even more pragmatically”.
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The digital pact has been in existence since 2019. A survey a few weeks ago showed, however, that almost half of the high school teachers still teach in schools where the WLAN does not work or does not work properly. That makes learning more difficult in the pandemic. In lockdown times, when teachers were teaching from home on laptops, school WiFi was not important. But now it is a matter of including the many children who are in quarantine at home, for example.
The necessary financial resources are there
It doesn’t fail because of the money: The pact is now endowed with 6.5 billion euros. But although digital lessons suddenly turned from a nice accessory to an essential tool during the pandemic, only 851 million had flowed out by the end of June this year.
The new Federal Minister for Education and Research wants to break down the hurdles in the digital pact.
(Photo: imago images / photothek)
In an interview with Handelsblatt, the President of the Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs Karin Prien (CDU) suggested that the federal government should create incentives for rapid implementation – that is, reward faster municipalities.
The new Federal Minister sees this, however, “skeptically”: Although incentives are “basically always good”, Corona has disclosed the digitization deficits of the schools so relentlessly that “everyone sees that it cannot go on like this”. So it is better to focus on removing obstacles.
The municipalities also argue that incentives do not lead to the goal faster: “Many municipalities cannot digitize their schools as quickly as necessary because there is a lack of essential things such as broadband connections, equipment in the school buildings, money and skilled workers,” said a spokesman for Association of cities and municipalities. Premium payments would “in the worst case, widen the gap between rich and poor communities” instead of creating good digital educational opportunities across the board.
Municipalities should be able to buy more services from outside
Stark-Watzinger, on the other hand, sees Priens’ proposal to allow municipalities to purchase external planning capacities from Digitalpakt funds if necessary. One should “definitely talk about it”. The IT experts at the Association of Towns and Municipalities also believe that this is helpful.
In addition, however, it is necessary that they “can also award contracts for maintenance and IT support to external companies”, because the municipalities often lack the staff for this too. Even if there were more IT workers in the market, municipalities would hardly be able to compete on government salaries. For example, the GEW had therefore demanded that the municipalities urgently need to train more IT staff themselves.
There is great relief in municipalities and states about the promised extension of the digital pact until 2030 – the ministers of education had long been calling for this. This should give the municipalities the security that they will not be left with the follow-up costs for replacement procurement, support, maintenance and operation.
Therefore, the Digital Pact 2.0 must ensure that in the medium term money will also flow for IT administration and not just for hardware, according to the Association of Cities. “If we create reliability, municipalities can also train more IT staff themselves,” said its general manager Helmut Dedy. However, the municipalities need “clarity very quickly” as to how they can attract and retain the necessary IT staff for the schools “after the end of the current digital pact in 2024.”
In general, the Digital Pact 2.0 must be “unbureaucratic, fast and flexible,” demands Dedy. So far, the application and award procedures are too complicated and the deadlines for processing are often very short. Financially weak cities in particular are too often unable to use funding opportunities properly because they lack the staff for the time-consuming application process. Much more “trust in the problem-solving skills on site” is needed, says Dedy. The Association of Towns and Municipalities sees the states as obliged to provide the municipalities with administrative and advisory support.
The municipalities see the federal states as primarily responsible for the overwhelming digital pact bureaucracy. “Often a ribbon was twisted and additional requirements were made that the federal government did not even ask for,” says Alexander Handschuh, digital expert for the Association of Cities and Towns.
The implementation of the digital pact apparently works faster where the state and municipalities are closely linked: So far, most of the money has flowed out in the city-states.
Bavaria criticizes federal bureaucracy
Individual states, on the other hand, place the blame on the federal government: For example, the Bavarian Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs states that it provided “a high density of regulations and comprehensive reporting requirements”, which made the whole thing “very time-consuming for the municipalities”. The specifications of the Federal Ministry of Education required “a comprehensive detailed planning of the IT equipment as well as detailed documentation up to the description of measures at the individual schools when applying for funding,” said a spokesman.
In addition, there would be “detailed usage lists at the level of the individual schools afterwards”. Changes to the funding modalities and reporting criteria in the ongoing process would make implementation by the federal states even more difficult: they would hardly have any leeway and alone would bear the risk of funding failures. So there is plenty to talk about for the first digital pact meeting of the new Federal Minister of Education with representatives of the federal states and municipalities.
More: Education Minister Stark-Watzinger: “Want to break into a decade of innovations.”