Impulse paper: Measuring education recipients and institutions

Contents

Too little is happening in education policy in Germany and reform steps are too small. This is one of the assessments of the Vodafone Foundation and the Weizenbaum Institute, which have formulated a hundred recommendations for German education policy in the impulse paper "Data-based to good education".

Especially in times of a change of government, the momentum must be understood and Germany must move away from mini-reforms. According to the foundation and the institute, Germany must strive for a data-based change of course. The aim is to increase efficiency despite limited and sometimes even dwindling resources –, whether in terms of the availability of qualified teachers or the existing infrastructure in the education system. According to the Foundation and the Institute, the great panacea is to systematically record, evaluate and exchange all the data that is generated and also – to expose it to the free market economy, taking into account "property rights" –.

If the proposals are thought through to the end, the state and market participants will receive citizens who are completely measured according to their performance. Does this really improve education or does it just better determine the market values of individuals? During the presentation of the paper, this reading was rejected and considered unlikely due to the anonymization of data, but the paper does not draw any clearly formulated ethical boundaries for comprehensive data collection or performance analysis, which could also be misused.
Reference is only made here to the Estonian system of abuse control through complete documentation of access.

Hoping for team spirit

Some of the demands in the impulse paper are not new at all, just repackaged in new language. Among other things, this concerns German federalism. It is obviously clear to those involved that this cannot be fundamentally changed, but that it makes work considerably more difficult. Accordingly, an appeal is made to the self-image of those involved. Instead of "competitive federalism", "team federalism" is the order of the day. However, it will probably be difficult for state politicians to accept as a political pledge that they want to distinguish themselves through differences in education policy. If federalism remains as it is, – with all its advantages and shortcomings – this could currently protect learners and teachers from the complete outflow of data and market economy exploitability.

In order to bring everyone involved together and promote team spirit despite federalism, the Vodafone Foundation and the Weizenbaum Institute are proposing a further round of meetings between the various educational stakeholders. This should bring together those involved in the Conference of Education Ministers, as well as the state governments, representatives of the federal government and representatives of local authorities. The agreed objectives – should also result in "declarations of commitment [...] stating their respective contributions" with stakeholders from civil society –. This would create a further level of administration and discussion, but this would only be based on the goodwill of those involved – presumably only last until the next election is due. This is nothing new either.

In addition, the impulse paper by the Institute and the Foundation recommends that the Digital Pact II, which has only been promised so far, should not be extended until 2030, but rather more reliably until 2035. The Starchancen program, which was only launched under the traffic light system and started in August 2024, should also be extended directly to the pre-school sector.

From the cradle to the grave

In order to improve the education system based on data, "continuous transparency" is required, which ultimately enables evaluations and comparisons through science-based monitoring. At the same time, this should not lead to additional burdens in educational institutions. But who should collect this data? Which comparative tests would have to be written regularly across all federal states?

In order to be able to collect all comparative data at federal, state, local, school, teacher and pupil level, an education data space should be developed. For pupils, this would also involve the introduction of a "supra-regionally usable education identification number" and a usable education history register. According to the foundation and institute, the education data room should not only store pseudonymized and anonymized education data from elementary school to senior citizens, but also the connection with "neighboring data rooms" is important. This includes health data as well as data from youth welfare and social services.

Although the publishers of the paper refer to the data collection in the education sector in terms of the rights of those involved, they call for the maximum possible evaluation and disclosure. "Overall, digital and, in particular, data protection regulation should be redesigned to pave the way for data-based solutions and regulations should be designed to be digital and SME-friendly." This is also important for them to note: "The digital education industry is an important growth market both globally and nationally. Above all, market-driven offerings in a competitive environment are important drivers of innovation. The growth of a rich landscape of trustworthy private providers and competitors must therefore be supported across the entire spectrum of digital value creation."

What does that mean in granular terms?

In order to increase individual learning success and also obtain accurate data on student performance,
the "rapidly growing range of AI-supported tools for lesson-related analysis" is currently important. Teachers would be able to use these tools to adapt individual learning opportunities in a timely manner. This would also result in data accompanying lessons, which could be made available to research and industry via a possible education data room.

Digital tools are also indispensable for making the work of teachers "more effective and fulfilling". Digital tools should therefore reduce the workload in schools, pre-school education and administration. They should take over routine documentary and administrative tasks. The use of recognition and analysis software, for example, to evaluate "handwritten student work digitally" and generate prompt feedback could be a concrete relief.

These ideas are not new either and are already being promoted at state and teacher level with the use of various software offerings.

Facilitate procurement

The proposal from the impulse paper that the procurement and testing of educational software should not have to be carried out by 16 different education ministries or data protection officers seems sensible. Software that has already been tested by some countries could receive a seal of approval and thus end up on a white list for educational institutions.
This is already the case in Austria, for example. This would provide teachers and educational institutions with significantly better legal protection.

(kbe)