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Empty classroom: Not everyone who sits here during the day has the same opportunities

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Karl-Josef Hildenbrand / dpa

Educational opportunities are unevenly distributed in this country. In order to counteract this, after tough negotiations, the federal and state governments have agreed on "decisive cornerstones" for the start-up opportunities program for schools in difficult situations planned by the traffic light parties. This was announced by the Federal Ministry of Education and the Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder (KMK) in Berlin.

4000,<> schools in Germany with around one million pupils can expect billions of euros in special state funding in the coming years. There is a lot of potential in the program to help ensure that educational success does not depend or no longer depends so strongly on social background, said Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (FDP).

About one in ten schools and vocational schools is expected to benefit from additional funding in the coming decade. In total, there are around 40,000 schools with almost eleven million pupils in Germany.

Additional positions planned for school social work

Schools "with a high proportion of socially disadvantaged pupils" are to be promoted, as stated in the coalition agreement of the traffic light. They are to be supported with money, for example, for investments in a better and more modern learning environment as well as for a more attractive working environment for staff. In addition, there are funds at the free disposal of the schools – a so-called opportunity budget. In addition, additional positions for school social work are to be created.

The background to this is the realization that success at school in Germany continues to depend heavily on the parental home. Educational studies also show a decline in competences. Many children fail in primary school at reading, writing, arithmetic, lag behind and then do not graduate later. "Everywhere it is clear that things cannot go on like this," said Ties Rabe, Hamburg's school senator and coordinator of the SPD-led ministries of education. (You can read more about this here.)

Start initially with 1000 schools

According to the key points, the funding program is to start in the coming school year, initially with at least 1000 schools because of the planning and preparation time. By the 2026/27 school year at the latest, all 4000 schools are to be included. The funding is to run for ten years. The federal government wants to provide up to one billion euros annually. The federal states are to contribute the same amount, whereby they may credit their own similar funding programmes that are already underway. This was the subject of long and hard negotiations.

One of the key points is to halve the number of pupils who fail to meet the minimum standards in math and German at the Startchancen schools by the end of the programme.

Federal states should select schools

Another point of contention was the criteria used to select the schools that are to receive the funding and how the federal money is distributed accordingly to the federal states. It is now planned that the federal states themselves will select their schools to be funded, name them before the start of the program and justify the selection in line with the goals of the Start Opportunities program. Key factors in the selection should be how much children and young people at a school are affected by poverty and how many pupils come from families with a migration history.

The education policy spokesman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag, Thomas Jarzombek, welcomes the agreement between the federal and state governments – but warns that the funding "for real starting opportunities" would have to start much earlier. According to him, it would have been more important for children to be given more support before they start school, as he told SPIEGEL. "With a nationwide uniform diagnosis of the level of development of 3- to 4-year-olds and individual support offers, we must take the next step towards even more starting opportunities in our country."

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