Waiting for second Digital Pact and permanent solution
There is a pact strategy for digitalization of schools that is not a permanent solution. Minister of Education of Rhineland-Palatinate criticizes this again.
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The money from the first Digital Pact for Schools has been fully accessed by Rhineland-Palatinate; Digital Pact 2.0 is now set to apply from 2026 to 2031. The Minister of Education of Rhineland-Palatinate, Sven Teuber (SPD), is eagerly awaiting the start of the new pact but is also renewing his demand that funding for digital school equipment must be secured long-term.
Teuber told dpa that digitalization is an ongoing task for schools and school authorities, which is why a permanent solution with sustained federal funding is also necessary. Financial support for schools for modern IT infrastructure must be secured long-term. While Rhineland-Palatinate has its funds for digital school equipment, due to the high demand in schools, financial support from the federal government must be provided.
Changed Cost Sharing and a Funding Gap
At the end of 2024, after months of negotiation – complicated by the collapse of the traffic light coalition government – the federal and state governments agreed on Digital Pact 2.0. According to this, both sides are to invest 2.5 billion euros each in digital school equipment over the next six years – a deterioration for the states. In the first Digital Pact, which started in 2019 and expired at the end of the application deadline in May 2024, the federal government initially contributed 5 billion euros to the digitalization of schools. 90 percent of the expenses were borne by the federal government, while states and municipalities only had to cover ten percent. Due to the Corona pandemic, the federal funds of the first Digital Pact were increased to a total of 6.5 billion euros in 2020; 500 million euros were specifically made available for service laptops for teachers, 500 million for the procurement of loaner laptops for needy students, and another 500 million for the financing of IT administrators for schools. Due to the end of the application deadline for the first Digital Pact in May 2024 and the start of the second Digital Pact in 2026, a funding gap that was feared early on has emerged.
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Both the Education and Science Union (GEW, RLP) and the Association of Education and Training (VBE) had called for sustained funding for digital equipment in schools in the past. Minister of Education Teuber had done so this summer, during the Conference of Ministers of Education in Wismar.
(kbe)
