It’s getting serious for around 500 high school students. Starting next week, the tenth graders will take their final written exams. The first thing on the agenda is German on Wednesday, June 7th. “The children are well prepared and we can send them to the exams with a clear conscience,” says Josef Grundner, Rector of the Archbishop’s secondary school for girls in Erding. In general, the heads of the secondary schools in the district are confident that their students will be able to complete a normal degree despite the corona-related restrictions.
In contrast to the Abitur, there is obviously no discussion of the value of the secondary school leaving certificate. “We always insisted that the level shouldn’t go down. I think that the exams will be too difficult rather than too easy,” said Grundner. Subliminally, the students “may already have worries about Corona,” says Josef Hanslmaier, head of the Staatliche Realschule Taufkirchen, but they hardly ever expressed them. There are also no concerns on the part of parents that their children have poorer chances of graduating due to the corona restrictions. At least the headmasters don’t know anything about it. In any case, the colleagues got away with the material, confirms Hanslmaier: “Everyone got involved and we worked in such a way that the students can graduate normally.”
However, this year it will not be quite as normal for the final classes of the secondary schools. Your tests take place under the applicable hygiene requirements – especially distances and mask requirements. The pandemic has also tightened the schedule: Since the dates had to be postponed by 14 days, it is “very close to the back with the oral exams, the conferences and the certificates,” complains Grundner.
At the Heilig Blut Realschule this year not all graduates can write in the gym as usual, but only four of the seven classes. The rest of the 157 students will be distributed among the classrooms. This is also how the state secondary schools in Taufkirchen and Erding handle it, although the distance rules require considerably more space. The youngsters who want to test themselves get their own rooms. How the final exams are handled at the Staatliche Realschule Oberding could not be found out on Monday.
In order to save the students the stress of testing directly before the exam, they can take the tests home with them at the Heilig Blut Realschule. In Taufkirchen they would take place after the exam. As with the Abitur, the secondary school students are also allowed to interrupt a corona-related quarantine. “We had the case that a student’s quarantine would not have expired until one day after the date of her practical exam. She was allowed to end it one day earlier in consultation with the health department,” reports Grundner. The practical exams are over. Here, too, the schools rely on greater distances, masks and shift work.
Since February 22nd, the graduating classes have been allowed to go back to school, initially in alternating classes. Only at the Herzog-Tassilo-Realschule in Erding were the 137 high school students able to come back “in full class” right from the start thanks to switching to the largest classrooms and the gym, writes school principal Tobias Schiller. However, there can be no talk of satisfaction with distance and alternating lessons at the Realschulen. From a pedagogical point of view, alternating lessons are the worst option, emphasizes Grundner. “It’s neither digital nor in presence and has thrown us back. You can’t move forward when only half the class is there.” A transmission from the classroom as in Taufkirchen was not possible at the Catholic girls’ school Heilig Blut. The bad lines are to blame. The school should have broadband access by the end of 2021. This deadline could also not be met, said Grundner: “This is the digital emergency.” The pure distance teaching, however, has “worked well”.
Hanslmaier sees it a little differently: “At home, the concentration is different because there is more distraction. In school, the teachers can also intervene directly if the students are inattentive.” The lessons in practical subjects such as nutrition and health were particularly challenging: the students at the Heilig Blut girls’ school received instructions for at home, which were then accompanied by video conference.
Despite all the restrictions, the school principals of the Realschulen are in good spirits when it comes to the final exams. It is also encouraging that last year the graduates did not get any worse degrees than those in the cohorts in which the pandemic has not yet shaken everyday school life.
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