Covid-19
Prien: Gradually end tests and masks in schools
The President of the Conference of Ministers of Education (KMK) and Schleswig-Holstein CDU Education Minister Karin Prien. Photo: Christian Charisius/dpa
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How to proceed in the pandemic with the schools? Karin Prien, President of the Conference of Ministers of Education, calls for the corona measures to be relaxed. You have to “get out of a culture of fear”.
The President of the Conference of Ministers of Education (KMK), Karin Prien, calls for the corona measures in schools to be relaxed. “We have to get out of a culture of fear in schools,” said the Schleswig-Holstein CDU Minister of Education of the “Bild” newspaper.
When it opens from mid-February or early March, schools must also be relaxed. “Sports and music lessons must take place again in full. Testing must end gradually. By the end of March at the latest, two tests a week will probably be enough.” The obligation to test must gradually become a “test option”. The mask requirement must also gradually fall, first in the classroom on the square, then in the building.
Their reasoning: the high point of the omicron wave has already been passed in the first federal states such as Schleswig-Holstein, Berlin, Bremen and Hamburg, according to Prien. “Fortunately, this is also reflected in the declining number of infections among 5 to 18 year olds.”
The President of the German Teachers’ Association, Heinz-Peter Meidinger, had told the German Press Agency that the omicron wave still had a firm grip on school operations. The number of infections should not be increased again by loosening the restrictions too early, thereby endangering the nationwide face-to-face teaching again.