Education Minister Teuber in favor of data-driven school development

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Rhineland-Palatinate Education Minister Sven Teuber (SPD) is in favor of data-supported school development and a focus on teaching skills. For him, this goes hand in hand with continuous data collection for pupil IDs and educational biographies and a changed examination culture, explained Teuber in an interview with the German Press Agency.

Teuber referred to a recommendation paper for a changed learning and examination culture published by the Bertelsmann Foundation this June, which recommends, among other things, "suitable instruments for learning progression diagnostics that [enable] feedback on what has already been achieved and what still needs to be learned". Education experts from Rhineland-Palatinate contributed to the paper. Teuber also wants to take a look at data-supported school development in Canada in September, as this is already particularly advanced there.

Ongoing diagnostics of skills acquisition

According to Teuber, there are already procedures for primary school classes in Rhineland-Palatinate that can be used to determine which skills each child has and how their development is progressing. Teachers would then receive feedback on what they should pay closer attention to with which child. An AI could evaluate this.

In future, a pupil ID should help to make individual developments traceable and show educational biographies. According to Teuber, this is also good for parents. Teachers could use the pupil ID to track developments with pupils and parents – to see where someone is stagnating and how this can be remedied. According to the Bertelsmann paper, such a system is geared towards the teaching of basic skills and those that go beyond these; it speaks of "educational minimum" and "educational maximum".

"Therefore, the design and organization of teaching and learning processes should be oriented towards two poles, which can best be described as 'educational minimum' and 'educational maximum'. By focusing on an educational minimum, the school, and not least society as a whole, commits itself to enabling all children and young people to acquire the skills required for a self-determined life of responsible participation. By focusing on the individual educational maximum, schools are committed to the goal of enabling all adolescents to develop their individual educational potential as far as possible."

Examinations should support learning

With a closer look at individual learning paths, the current culture of examinations should therefore also be changed. For Teuber, this means, among other things, that children should be tested more individually and not always using the same examination formats. He calls for more variation –, such as a discussion, a presentation or a creative contribution instead of a written exam. For him, an individualized learning path also means breaking away from the traditional class work mindset: "Not everyone has to do the same thing at the same time, but we have different areas of development for each pupil." In concrete terms, this means, for example: "The proof of performance takes place at point X for pupil Y and at point Y for pupil Z."

What happens after an exam must also change. A learning path is not ticked off with a completed exam, but feedback must lead to children and young people being able to close gaps that have been identified. Teuber told dpa: "The important thing is the feedback on the grade. Why is this a 1, a 3 and why is this poor?" This also includes the question: "What do you need to learn and what should you continue to learn and work on in a skills-oriented way?" According to Teuber, this is the decisive factor: "I have a much greater added value than if I have written six or seven exams, all from different teachers, but they never become sustainable." Bertelsmann states: "At the moment, exams are often detached from the individual learning and qualification process of children and young people; they rarely provide learning support and differentiated feedback."

Grades should not be abolished by turning to more individualized learning paths, explained Teuber: "We all want grades and we want to achieve good grades in the end." However, he also emphasized: "A grade is a statement about the development of children. But we also have to enable children to develop". Pupils need time for development and education.

With regard to the curricula, he supports a corresponding review and renewal. It is not about "just doing less", but about maintaining the desire to learn and curiosity for new things; society is constantly changing.

Growing importance of data collection and use

Data-supported school development as well as the pupil ID and an education history register can be found as objectives in the coalition agreement of the current federal government of the CDU, SPD and CSU. During the coalition negotiations, the Vodafone Foundation and the Weizenbaum Institute, among others, strongly promoted systematic data analysis in the education sector, albeit with the involvement of private providers in an "important growth market". The former president of the Didacta Association, Dr. Theodor Niehaus, also told heise online that although a lot of data is generated in the education system , this data has not been used sufficiently to date.

Pressure to change due to AI

Current examination formats and the examination culture in schools are not only being criticized with regard to more individual learning paths, the widespread availability of AI applications is also putting the current system to the test. Austrian teacher Bernhard Gmeiner explained to heise online in an interview how examination formats should change in light of the situation : "Previous examination formats will become useless through the use of AI".

(kbe)