Federal government wants to support digital pact for schools with billions more

Yesterday, Friday, August 30, the German Federal Minister of Education and Research, Bettina Stark-Watzinger, made a concrete offer to the federal states as school authorities for further support as part of the Digital Pact for Schools. According to the Minister, the Federal Government is prepared to contribute a sum of 2.5 billion euros to the program over a period of five years starting next year. The condition for this is that the federal states themselves contribute 50 percent of the costs to be paid for the digital education infrastructure. On Monday of next week, a special meeting of the Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (KMK) of the federal states will discuss the next steps.

The IT and telecommunications industry association Bitkom e.V. welcomed the minister's announcement in a statement. Association President Dr. Ralf Wintergerst emphasized that the federal government had only now, "after a long period of hesitation", concretized its offer for a Digital Pact 2.0. "Schools and school authorities finally need planning security," said Wintergerst.

The ball is now in the court of the federal states, so to speak, said the association president: "The federal government is making a proposal, now it's up to the federal states. We are appealing to the federal states to also provide 2.5 billion euros for the digitalization of schools. The impasse has already lasted two years. The federal states now have the opportunity and the obligation to clear the way for the Digital Pact 2.0."

The Digital Pact for Schools is based on a joint declaration of intent by the federal government and the Bundestag from 2018 to promote digitalization in general education schools with a sum of 5 billion euros. The announced form of cooperation between the federal and state governments was deemed to be finalized in 2019 with the approval of the Bundestag and Bundesrat to amend Article 104c of the German Basic Law. The "Administrative Agreement on the Digital Pact for Schools 2019 to 2024" (archived PDF) finally came into force on August 19, 2020. In the same year, funding was increased by 1.5 billion euros in light of the Covid pandemic.

The federal and state governments have been arguing for some time about the distribution of tasks and burdens in the digitalization of schools. There has also been repeated fundamental criticism of the structure of the Digital Pact. In many cases, this was due to the lack of commitment on the part of the federal states and the federal government's lack of control options. In mid-2021, for example, only 852 million of the federal funds, which had grown to 6.5 billion by then, had been drawn down. In its 2022 audit report, the Federal Audit Office even went so far as to recommend to the federal government that the pact should not be extended. In 2023, the European Court of Auditors also criticized the inefficient use of funds, referring to grants that the European Union had provided for the Digital Pact.

(psz)