The digital learning opportunities have improved little or not at all since spring. This is what 68, 2 percent of German citizens with school-age children stated in a representative survey commissioned by the Federal Association of Digital Economy (BVDW). ) According to the survey, 7.7 percent of the 1000 German citizens surveyed in December. 24, 1 percent assume that the learning platforms will improve.

Federalism and digital education 30, 4 percent of parents recognize that the teachers use their leeway here and promote online use. 26 percent assume the opposite. 38, 5 percent answered with “partly / partly”.

The education sector in Germany is in the hands of the federal states and therefore very much organized differently. 46, 1 percent emphasize against this background that central regulation by the federal government is necessary. 37, 2 percent assume that teachers, parents and students “simply need a little more time”. A good fifth, however, is of the opinion that there is no need for change at all: 22, 1 percent confirm the statement that schools should “not go digital” .

BVDW President Matthias Wahl rated the results as “a very sobering signal and bad testimony for German education policy”. The association also fears that the data protection issue has led to uncertainty among many school officials and teachers.

Recommendations The Federal Data Protection Officer and countries recommend that video conferencing systems from US providers such as Microsoft, Zoom, Google, GoToMeeting and Cisco, in particular, be “carefully checked” before they are used, particularly for data transfers to third countries. Previously, the leading products from overseas had failed a short test by the Berlin data protection officer Maja Smoltczyk.

At the beginning of December, Smoltczyk also identified significant improvements to the official “e-learning platform Lernraum Berlin. She was there initially encountered “significant legal and technical problems.” A primary school in Berlin-Lichtenberg had stopped digital lessons because there was no legal security for such offers. With the start of the hard lockdown last week, many homeschooling platforms in the federal states were such as the learning space Berlin , the Bavarian portal Mebis or the Saxon variant LernSax difficult to access or completely down.

(anw)