He’s a little relieved, says Walter Baier. The headmaster at the Bruckmühl high school (Rosenheim district) reports only two positive tests and ten students who are in quarantine. The rest of his 750 student body was able to sit in the classroom again on Monday morning, meet friends and listen to the teachers. “That’s the way it should be,” says Baier.
A calm start to school after the Christmas holidays, that’s what everyone wanted. All the more so since the uncertainty among parents and teachers has recently been great. Would the schools really open? If yes how? Would tons of people returning from vacation from high-risk areas like Italy end up in Omikron quarantine? Many fears dissipated on Monday.
Probably also because many parents followed the Ministry of Education’s request to take a test before school started and, if the result was positive, to leave their child at home straight away. In general, more time will be spent on testing in the next few weeks. Because the 56 percent vaccinated twelve to 17-year-olds and the recovered students now have to test themselves again. “Because people who have been vaccinated or who have recovered can also infect others in the event of an infection (even if they show no symptoms themselves),” said a letter from the Ministry of Education last Wednesday.
It is a harbinger that school will be anything but normal in 2022, even in face-to-face mode. A shortage of teachers, learning gaps, quarantine times, canceled class trips – all of this worries the school administrators. The seventh grades at Baier’s grammar school should actually go to the ski camp in the spring, but nothing will come of that this year. Neither from the school camp in the spring and the school exchange with Belgium – the Ministry of Culture has banned class trips until Easter. “Something is missing that used to strengthen our solidarity,” he says.
“We need a clear message”
Like him, many school principals are worried about what will happen to the quarantine times. As of now, if an omicron is suspected, the whole class still has to be quarantined for two weeks. Last week the Bund-Länder-Round forged plans for shortened times, but these have not yet been passed through the political authorities. “We now need a clear message,” says Michael Hoderlein, the headmaster of the Berg-am-Laim primary school in Munich. There is currently a lot of uncertainty about how to proceed in the event of a positive pool test.
Tested pupils, positive tests, quarantine times, remaining test capacities – like all school principals in Bavaria, Hoderlein has to take regular inventories in-house and send figures to the Ministry of Education. Like so many, he is only moderately happy about it. “We manage ourselves partly in the incapacity to act,” he says. During this time, it is much more important to deal with the students on a personal level. “The children now need attention and continuity,” he says.
A sentence that Walter Baier would immediately sign. In order to compensate for the learning deficits from the past two years, he adjusted the performance surveys at his school. “Otherwise it would be unfair,” he says. So he implements the appeal of the minister of education to maintain a sure instinct. The deficits in modern languages and the natural sciences are particularly striking, he says. The children would have forgotten a lot again what they were already able to do.
School as a meeting place
So you fight on two fronts. The question is to what extent you can win this fight at all. Baier is a realist here. “There is no way we can make up for what has been neglected in the last year and a half. The gaps are simply too big,” he says. He doesn’t want that to be understood as a declaration of bankruptcy. Rather, as an appeal to understand school not only as a place of learning, but also as a meeting place.
If, contrary to all political efforts, the health department should lock this up in between, Bruckmühl wants to use Microsoft teams for instruction. With Visavid, the Free State has set up an alternative learning platform that is supposed to offer better data protection. For many, however, the advantages of teams currently outweigh the better opportunities for collaboration. So also for Hans Lohmüller. “Nothing can match teams,” says the headmaster of the Special Education Center in Landshut and state chairman of the Association of Special Education. Like Baier, his material cost manager has obtained the license – that of the Ministry of Culture has now expired.
Nevertheless, of course, everyone wishes that distance learning will not be necessary. And that maybe even a little more than just teaching will be possible. While Hoderlein in Munich hopes that his protégés will be able to go back to the school camp at least in early summer, Baier is hoping for one or two concerts for his Bruckmühler students, yes, maybe even a summer party. “This is what the students remember when they leave school,” he says.