Bavaria’s private schools get more money. This was announced by the CSU and Free Voters (FW) parliamentary groups. In the budget for 2023, the so-called school fee replacement is to increase by 12.8 million euros to a total of 141 million euros per year. School authorities whose existence is threatened by higher energy costs benefit from the state government’s hardship fund. According to the joint statement, there are also plans to revise the School Financing Act in order to “put state subsidies for private schools on a long-term basis and structurally secure them”.
The Free State supports 1,364 private schools with money, where 200,000 girls and boys learn. In rural areas, some church schools have a substitute function and operate, for example, the only secondary school in the area. The schools are obliged to pay comparatively low school fees in order to be open to all children. In addition, school authorities cannot bring in rising costs.
Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) had already indicated that the hardship fund would be taken into account in mid-October after the cabinet meeting and thus reacted in a subordinate clause to a call for help from the Council of Free Schools (RFS) in Bavaria. Private school authorities have been complaining about a financial imbalance for a long time and are demanding a change in the school financing law. The fact that the CSU and FW are now announcing more grants and want to revise the law will not change anything about the planned protest action in the coming week, according to the Council of Free Schools. Bavaria’s Catholic and Protestant schools, Montessori and Waldorf schools and the Association of Bavarian Private Schools are organized into it.
On December 7, 8,000 private students are to gather on Munich’s Königsplatz. During a school lesson, the state government was made aware of its “arithmetic errors”, said Martina Klein, Chairwoman of the Evangelical School Foundation of the epd. Private secondary schools and high schools alone have lost around 64 million euros since 2018. The reason for the financial shortfalls is that the improved student-teacher ratio in state schools has not been adjusted in private schools, although this is an obligation according to the school law, said Klein. The funding commitment of the government factions does not solve this problem.