Education - Minister Hubig: Improving the transition from nursery to school
Following the poor results of German pupils in the latest Pisa study, Rhineland-Palatinate Education Minister Stefanie Hubig believes that the focus must be placed on the transition from nursery to school. "This is an issue that we have recognized," the SPD politician told the German Press Agency in Mainz. "Two worlds are still colliding here, the school world and the daycare world. We are working on dovetailing these two systems better and providing appropriate services."
Currently, individual daycare centers still work very differently, said Hubig. "There are great examples in the STEM field or in language acquisition, where children learn a lot of things that they will need for school later on, such as how to concentrate." This needs to be spread across the country. "Different focuses are good. But we need to make sure that it happens more systematically and that we also give teachers more support." MINT stands for mathematics, information technology, natural sciences and technology.
Hubig reported that the first joint conference of the ministers of education and the ministers of youth and family recently took a step towards better integration between nurseries and schools. The focus was on questions of early support. "Children have very different abilities when they start school," said the Minister. "We no longer have age cohorts that can all do roughly the same thing." There is a much greater spread than there used to be, which puts a lot of strain on nurseries and schools.
"I think we need to focus very strongly on basic skills," said Hubig. Language, for example, is "fundamental for everything, not just for reading, but also for mathematics, for everything else". At the same time, care must be taken to ensure that pupils who can already do a lot are also given opportunities. "Thinking in terms of fixed classes with fixed settings, where everyone does the same thing at the same time, simply no longer works in this day and age."
The Rhineland-Palatinate Education Minister does not believe in the debate about structural changes in education policy, including the demand for a change to the constitution. "I am still a supporter of federalism in education," she said. Nevertheless, cooperation between the federal states must become even more effective, "so that we don't all come up with the same thing 16 times. With the structural reform of the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs, we are tackling precisely that".
Not everything can be left up to the school. "We can't expect language acquisition to start at the school gate and end after the school gate," emphasized the Social Democrat. "Families are part of it, neighbors are part of it, sports clubs are part of it." Children and young people have different leisure activities than they used to. "Where many used to say that reading is my favorite hobby, today there are other leisure activities - with movies, with social media. But the good old book helps more with reading than watching movies."
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Source: www.stern.de
