Hanover / Bremen (dpa / lni) – The first week of school after the autumn vacation went well from the perspective of the Lower Saxony Ministry of Culture. The large majority of the around 3,000 schools reported no corona cases, as Ministry spokesman Ulrich Schubert announced. Operation was restricted on Friday at 52 schools, which is just under two percent. According to the Ministry’s figures, 38 classes, 20 cross-class cohorts and four cohorts had temporarily no face-to-face classes at the time.
Because of the high number of cases in the city of Delmenhorst, pupils there are taught alternately at school and at home – this way, the number of people in a class is reduced. Vocational school students are only there in their training companies or learn at home, as stated in a city ordinance.
“We managed to keep the schools open despite the difficult overall development and thus to meet the entitlement to the right to education of young people – with maximum protection of the pupils and employees in the schools”, said the Ministry of Education.
From Monday onwards, all pupils at secondary schools in Corona hotspots are required to wear a mask, as the state’s new regulation published on Friday shows. In the meantime, more than half of the districts and cities in Lower Saxony are considered to be corona risk areas because they had over 50 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants in the past seven days. In addition, there was a new regulation as to when schools had to temporarily switch from face-to-face teaching to shared classes. This will apply in the future if the incidence value of 100 is exceeded in the municipality and an infection protection measure such as quarantine has also been prescribed for a class in the school.
According to a query about the start of the school year, around four percent of state school employees work from home due to the corona pandemic. The Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs could not say whether other teachers with risk factors have applied for home office since the autumn break. The ministry did not know how many children and young people are currently registered for home schooling because they or their relatives belong to a risk group. The decision on such hardship cases lies with the school management.
In Bremen, according to the education department, only a few children and young people were withdrawn from classroom teaching due to risk factors. Spokeswoman Annette Kemp did not give exact numbers. Almost three percent of teachers work from home because they belong to the risk group. “The senatorial authority has created the possibility to recruit staff – that is of course difficult with the empty market.” Sometimes Master’s students would help out as the “extended arm” of the teachers in face-to-face teaching.
According to the Bremen education department, the proportion of students who have tested positive for Corona since the beginning of this school year is 0.23 percent. It is 0.37 percent for teachers and supervisory staff.
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