Education unions have before the deliberations of the education ministers of the federal states generally pronounced for open schools. At the same time, they are against excluding closings. The chairman of the Education and Science Union (GEW), Maike Finnern, said on n-tv: “To be honest, not all schools will be able to stay up. You have to be clear about it. ”She referred to the pre-Christmas period, when not all schools had classroom teaching for a long time. According to KMK data, around 40 of around 30,000 schools in Germany were closed in mid-December, and operations were restricted at 1,400 schools.
Face-to-face teaching is the first choice, “but not at any price either,” said Finnern. The chairman of the Association for Education and Upbringing (VBE), Udo Beckmann, said that they knew about the importance of face-to-face teaching for the development of children and young people. “The VBE continues to advocate maintaining face-to-face teaching, but not at any cost.” If it becomes necessary from a scientific point of view, alternate teaching and school closings to protect children and teachers should not be dogmatically excluded.
The President of the German Teachers’ Association, Heinz-Peter Meidinger, asked ntv.de for an “emergency plan” for additional measures if the number of infections in schools rose “explosively”. “Now simply to say, everything is fine, we have the situation under control, the measures taken are sufficient, will not be enough.” Education ministers of the federal states discuss in the afternoon about the situation at the schools.