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Our reporters

The call of the alliance “Schule muss anders” (“School must be different”), which includes 170 educational organisations and initiatives, brought out 15,000 to 20,000 participants nationwide (around 7,000 in Berlin, 2,000 in Munich and 3,000 in Cologne).

In the call for the education protest day “Bildungswende JETZT” (“Education change NOW”), the initiators address the federal and state governments as well as the Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (Kultusministerkonferenz, KMK), drawing on their online petition of the same name, which more than 70,000 people have signed.

With their four central demands, including at least €100 billion in “special funds for education” and “for a fairer, sustainable and inclusive education system that prepares for the future,” the alliance aims to counter one of the “most serious education crises since the founding of the Federal Republic.”

https://youtu.be/Fo6ET29mKzc

Video of the demonstration in Berlin

Nationwide, there is a shortage of hundreds of thousands of nursery places and 300,000 nursery educators in Germany. In the school sector, there will be a shortage of more than 160,000 teachers by 2035. According to the teachers’ association, a shortage of up to 40,000 teachers is expected for the coming school year alone.

“An enormous and widening shortage” of teachers and educators “meets an outdated, underfunded and segregated education system that is socially unjust,” the alliance states.

But the trade unionists and politicians who lead the alliance are themselves responsible for the misery in the education system that they loudly lament. They see the protests as nothing more than an opportunity to blow off steam and cover up their own right-wing and anti-education policies.

The alliance is led by the board members Philipp Dehne (teacher), spokesperson for education and culture for the Left Party group in the BVV (District Assembly) Berlin-Neukölln, and Ahmed Abed (lawyer), Berlin-Neukölln BVV Left Party group leader, as well as Jörg Tetzner, member of the district leadership the GEW education union in Berlin-Neukölln, and Annick Hartmann from the Parents’ Network.

Thus, the board is led by members of the very party that has been responsible for social and cultural decline in Berlin for almost 20 years, since the 2000s.

Source

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/09/25/rbuo-s25.html