Getting better – Ties Rabe knows something about that. Hamburg’s outgoing school senator has been playing the piano since he was twelve, practicing eighth notes and triplets, with his right and his left. So persistent that a craftsman who was working in his parents’ house once left with the words: “Well, the boy has patience!”
Raven has the anecdote Bergedorf newspaper told. He grew up there, in Hamburg’s southeast, where he worked as a journalist and later as a high school teacher. He once called it the happiest time of his life. His most successful began in 2011, when the then First Mayor Olaf Scholz was unable to entrust the education department to the renowned school politician Britta Ernst after winning the state election because she was also his wife. So Rabe got the call, a social democrat since 1992 and later managing director of the regional association. He didn’t hesitate and remained Hamburg’s school senator for 13 years, making him the longest-serving education minister. Now Ties Rabe has surprisingly resigned for health reasons. The loss will be felt throughout Germany.
The numbers not only spoke to him, but soon also for him
The school world is not one in which one can easily shine. Especially not in Hamburg, where many children come from difficult backgrounds. For a long time, the city state was a prime example of everything that went wrong in German education policy. Ties Rabe didn’t have an easy time of it at the beginning either; he was seen as the embodiment of the crisis, a criticism-resistant technocrat in Scholz’s style. The Time gave him the nickname “Graf Zahl” because of his love of statistics.
But the numbers not only spoke to him, but soon also for him. In Hamburg today there are more high school graduates, fewer school dropouts, and more young people are making the transition into working life. All-day care was expanded and hundreds of teachers were hired. Classes were reduced and new schools were built. Rabe introduced compulsory preschool for children aged five and over who performed particularly poorly in German tests. Education experts have long been calling for such an approach nationwide.
Rabe says he often worked “against the pedagogical mainstream,” for example when he emphasized the importance of dictation and was allowed to listen to sentences like: “Dictation comes from dictatorship.” In comparative tests, Hamburg students are now doing almost as well as those in Bavaria and Saxony. Rabe’s successor, Ksenija Bekeris, is also a social democrat, deputy state chairwoman of her party and a vocational school teacher. As she put it herself, she has “big shoes to fill.”
The Conference of Ministers of Education is now missing two important men
Rabe also leaves gaps elsewhere: for nine years, as coordinator of the so-called A states, he represented the SPD-led federal states in the Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (KMK) – and thereby brought experience and continuity to the body that significantly shapes education policy, but often through bickering and lengthy decision-making processes are a talking point.
The KMK is currently wrestling with the federal government over the Start Opportunities program, which is intended to support schools in socially difficult environments. Hamburg was also in the small group of four countries that pre-negotiated with the Federal Ministry. There should actually be an agreement by the beginning of February at the latest. It is still not certain whether the federal government will at the same time – as requested by the states – extend the digital pact, with which schools are to be digitally upgraded.
Rabe’s resignation comes at a bad time for the KMK. Especially since it has just been announced that the previous Hessian Minister of Education and coordinator of the CDU-led B states, Alexander Lorz, will be moving to the Ministry of Finance. Makes two less important men. As it became known on Tuesday, the Rhineland-Palatinate Minister of Culture Stefanie Hubig (SPD) will succeed Rabe as coordinator of the A states. The name of Schleswig-Holstein’s Minister of Education Karin Prien (CDU) is circulating as Lorz’s successor as coordinator of the B states, but it has not been officially confirmed.
During his time as Hamburg’s school senator, Ties Rabe experienced four PISA studies and, according to his own statement, more than 100 reforms. He kept an Excel spreadsheet about it, of course. When it came to supporting and demanding, Rabe was always a team challenger, and that also applied to himself. The health problems that affect “older men in leadership positions” have recently increased so much that “my strength is no longer sufficient for my duties “said Rabe on Tuesday at a recent press conference in Hamburg City Hall. No, luckily nothing is life-threatening, but you don’t have to let it get that far. Ties Rabe now has more time to practice the piano again.