Bitkom education conference: Digital education, sovereignty and a federal center

At the start of the Bitkom Education Conference on April 2, CEO Dr. Bernhard Rohleder called for more investment in education and digital sovereignty. While the coalition negotiations between the CDU/CSU and SPD are taking place behind closed doors in Berlin on the topics of education and digitalization, the industry association is appealing to the negotiators not to cut corners on these topics.

Social task

Rohleder explained that it is known that Friedrich Merz is not “the biggest fan of the digital pact for schools”. However, it is important that sufficient financial
funds are available for infrastructure, end devices and offers for training and further education for teachers and didactically well-designed content. German schools need to be brought up to date.

However, the association is not just looking at school education, but the entire education chain. In other words, it starts with early childhood education and extends to educational opportunities for adults who have already completed their educational career. They should also be given the opportunity to develop digital skills. To achieve this, the association is campaigning for a digital pact for the whole of Germany – apart from the digital pact, which is currently only intended for schools – and for a federal center for digital education. Such an offer could go beyond existing state and federal offers.

It is important to increase the digital skills of the entire population to be able to counter anti-democratic actors and also to achieve digital sovereignty in Germany and Europe. There is a “real culture war” in social networks and people need to be able to recognize “trash” shared there, said Rohleder. In the current national and international situation, there are important decisions to be made that must be considered when forming a government. Regarding schools, the education conference will also focus on the use of artificial intelligence, as this will play an extremely important role in the future.

The keynote speech at the conference was given by former Education Minister Annette Schavan. She spoke out in favor of taking a closer look at the regions and municipalities in Germany to better understand the needs of schools, following international comparative studies in recent decades. This could improve the quality of local schools. She was critical of the behavior of the federal states in using and continuing to use investment funds in education without major influence from the federal government. Here, too, she recommended looking more at the local authorities and breaking up the federalism of the federal states in the education sector by giving local authorities more decision-making power. The Netherlands is a good example of such a model. The federal government must also ensure that educational standards in Germany become more comparable so that it is easier for families to move between federal states. Schavan also called for more to be done in education policy for equal opportunities, the recognition of internationality in schools and more democratic education.

Open conference

The Bitkom Education Conference will take place online on April 2 and 3, 2025. The event can be followed free of charge, for example on YouTube.

(kbe)