German students complain about poor technical equipment. Iconic image. Photo: iStock
The “Digital Pact School” – a failure story? Poor technical equipment, no planned learning content, unqualified teachers: students express clear criticism.
According to the pupils affected, the technical equipment in schools in Germany leaves more to be desired, despite billions being invested through the “Digital Pact for Schools”. In a representative survey commissioned by the digital association Bitkom, 87 percent of the young people surveyed between the ages of 14 and 19 named poor or no WiFi as the most urgent problem in their school – well ahead of the teacher shortage at 59 percent.
The students also complain about “poor technical equipment”. This was named by more than half of the respondents (56 percent) as one of the most pressing problems in their school.
In 2018, the then black-red federal government launched a five billion euro funding program with the “Digital Pact School”. However, the federal states were only reluctant to access the funds. Digitization concepts in schools will be funded with the pact until the end of 2023. The total is now around 6.5 billion euros.
The funds can be paid out until 2024. It is not yet clear whether the program will be continued as a “Digital Pact School 2.0”, although the coalition agreement of the traffic light government promised a new edition with a term until 2030.
In the current Bitkom survey, a large majority of students said that they were more motivated (74 percent) by using digital educational media such as learning platforms. However, 42 percent criticized the fact that their teachers did not know how to use digital educational media sensibly in the classroom.
Bitkom President Ralf Wintergerst said when presenting the study that the survey shows that the digitization of education is not just about infrastructure and devices. (dpa/dl)