Technology
Countries are putting pressure on Digital Pact 2.0 for schools
The digital pact was initially valued at five billion euros. In the wake of Corona, the program was increased to 6.5 billion to finance tablets, laptops and administrators. photo
© Uli Deck/dpa
What’s next with school digitalization? The federal and state governments are having difficulty negotiating costs. The Federal Ministry of Education is now being urged to present a concept.
In the federal-state negotiations about a continuation of the funding program “The states are continuing to put pressure on the Digital Pact for Schools. The current president of the Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (KMK), Saarland’s Education Minister Christine Streichert-Clivot (SPD), asked Federal Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (FDP) in a letter to submit a draft for this week to present a so-called Digital Pact 2.0. The media company Table.Briefings first reported on it.
The letter, which is also available to dpa, formulates the “clear expectation” that the Federal Ministry of Education will “send a promised framework text by April 19, 2024 at the latest”. According to the letter, the ministry had promised to send such a text on April 26th, a week later and shortly before another round of federal-state negotiations on April 30th. The KMK is now urging an earlier transmission “so that this conversation can be prepared as constructively and specifically as possible and lead to results,” as it says in the letter.
The federal government is once again accused of delaying negotiations on a federal-state agreement necessary for a digital pact 2.0. The agreed timetable for the negotiations was “not adhered to by the federal government”. “In further negotiations, the binding nature of agreements is considered fundamental, also in view of the tight time frame,” it continues.
The states are pushing for a clear commitment from the federal government to a funding program in the volume of the first digital school pact, which is now about to expire, and want to finalize a federal-state agreement, if possible, at the next conference of education ministers in June.
What is the Digital Pact?
The digital pact for the technical expansion of schools was launched in 2019 for five years with an initial five billion euros from the federal government for the development of schools’ own WiFi or for the purchase of interactive boards (smartboards). In the wake of Corona, the program was further increased to 6.5 billion to finance tablets, laptops and administrators.
In its coalition agreement, the traffic light announced that it would launch a follow-up program with the federal states, a “Digital Pact 2.0”, which will run until 2030. Negotiations have been tough on this for a long time – even harder now that it has become clear how tight the federal government is on cash. In principle, schools are a matter for the states and not for the federal government.