Education - Initiative submits referendum for G9 for all classes
The Parents' Initiative for a quick return to the nine-year secondary school in Baden-Württemberg will file a popular initiative at the Interior Ministry on Monday. This was announced over the weekend by the organization team of the initiative "G9 now! BW".
Ten weeks ago, a popular initiative of the initiative was rejected in the state parliament. During this time, work was done with the state government on solutions outside of a popular initiative. "Unfortunately, there was no willingness to compromise from high representatives of the state government", said Marita Raschke from the organization team.
The red-green coalition had agreed on common proposals for fundamental reforms in April. Among other things, G9 was supposed to be introduced to the school year 2025/2026 and start with classes five and six. The gymnasiums should also be given the option to offer G8 tracks - but without receiving additional funding for it.
The initiative is primarily demanding a temporal extension of the remaining teaching material for the current classes by one school year, as is already the case at G9 model schools. "For this, neither new lesson plans nor more teachers are necessary, as the state government assumes. With this temporal extension, the children and their families will regain valuable time alongside school to close learning gaps caused by Corona and mitigate its psychological consequences", said Raschke.
The popular initiative is based on the popular initiative that received more than 100,000 signatures. According to Raschke, the necessary 10,000 signatures for the application of the popular initiative have been collected.
The Interior Ministry will examine the admissibility of the popular initiative upon submission and then set the collection period for the popular initiative. This process could take several weeks. For the popular initiative, parents would have to collect significantly more signatures than for the popular initiative, namely around 770,000.
Currently, the standard in Baden-Württemberg is the eight-year secondary school. G9 exists only as a model project at 44 state schools and at some private schools.
- The Parents' Initiative plans to submit their popular initiative for a weekend expansion of the G9 model in Baden-Württemberg's schools to the Ministry of the Interior in Stuttgart.
- Despite the previous rejection of a similar initiative in the state parliament, the Parents' Initiative "G9 now! BW" has collected the required 10,000 signatures for their new initiative and is now awaiting approval from the Interior Ministry in Stuttgart.
- If successful, this initiative could lead to a temporary extension of the remaining curriculum for current classes by one school year in all Baden-Württemberg schools, providing children with additional time to close learning gaps caused by the pandemic.
- The red-green coalition had previously agreed on reform proposals that included introducing G9 starting from the 2025/2026 school year and offering optional G8 tracks in gymnasiums, although these reforms would not receive any additional funding.
- With over 770,000 signatures required, parents involved in the initiative have a significant task ahead to gather the required support for their popular initiative, which aims to expand the G9 model to all schools in Baden-Württemberg.
