At the request of the Verband Bildung und Erziehung (VBE), a survey was also conducted among school principals in Baden Württemberg about their satisfaction with the federal state government's school policy. The result is a blow to the reputation of the local state government's school policy, as the state's principals are visibly dissatisfied and feel that they have been forgotten by the ruling government's policy.
The aforementioned survey was conducted by the social research institute forsa on behalf of the VBE. In this survey, 1,310 principals nationwide were asked about the situation in their schools and asked to rate the school policy of the state governments with school grades. This survey was also carried out in Baden Württemberg among 250 school principals. If the development of school policy were an examination, then the politicians which are responsible in the state government would, according to the majority of school principals, rush through this examination in a wide arc.
The survey came to the conclusion that the Baden Württemberg state government would receive an average grade of 4.5. Accordingly, the majority of school principals (57%) were in favor of giving the state government a grade of 5 or 6. This is evidence of a high level of dissatisfaction among principals in Baden Württemberg. However, the state governments in other federal states also did not score particularly well with their school policies among principals. The average rating for the various state governments is 4.3%. Overall, not a good report card for all state governments. Nevertheless, it is interesting that satisfaction in this question is below the national average in Baden Württemberg, which tends to be more prosperous.
There are many reasons for the high level of dissatisfaction. One of the reasons is the increasing burden of excessive bureaucracy, which, according to 98% of those surveyed, is the biggest stress factor in Baden-Württemberg. The big bureaucracy should not be underestimated in the area of school policy. A relatively good recent example of this is the recently adopted tax regulation on the sale of cakes at school events. All school principals in the country received a thirty-page letter on this issue. This regulation, colloquially known as the cake tax, is a complicated legal muddle through which school administrators have to fight their way when it comes to the question of whether and how cakes may be sold by students as part of school activities in the future and how they will be taxed. However, the regulation of the cake tax is just one of many examples of excessive bureaucracy with which school administrators are confronted.
However, the issue of bureaucracy is not the fundamental problem, even if it is openly addressed as a major problem by many principals. This is the school system, which has been cut to the bone by the ruling class and which teachers and principals have to keep running somehow. Of course, the growing bureaucracy is a big nuisance when, as a school principal, you already have your hands full plugging the holes in the broken system.
If we look at the part of the survey in which the country's school principals are asked about what they consider to be the biggest problems in schools. Unsurprisingly, the majority of teachers (60 percent) cite the shortage of teaching staff as the biggest problem. This is a very clear expression of the broken school system, as low salaries and a heavy workload that lasts long after the official end of the working day mean that people are less and less interested in actually taking up the teaching profession. Even many long-serving teachers are now deciding to give up their profession and take up a new one in which they are exposed to less stress. In order to solve this problem, politicians have made no attempt to actually change the situation, apart from fake measures such as advertising campaigns, in which teachers are sometimes even ridiculed, and attempts to entice teachers in poor federal states away from rich federal states
Another problem cited by 39% of respondents was the integration of refugee children as the biggest problem in everyday school life. This part maybe will be used by reactionary elements to fuel the growing chauvinism against refugees. However, this would be very plumb and would show that those elements have no understanding of the actual situation in schools. If you talk to teachers or just students, it becomes clear that the problem in this issue is not with the refugee children. Rather, the problem is in the fact, that the so-called integration of the aforementioned refugee children, for those in power, consists of placing these children, often without German language skills, in already overcrowded classes in the schools and leaving these schools alone with the task of educating these children without any help. The result is usually that these refugee children are then parked in school classes and take part in regular lessons without often understanding anything about them at all. The task of providing education for refugee children is therefore simply shifted to the schools, which are unable to facilitate this participation in education and the politicians show, that they have no interests about the situiation of the refugee childrens.
In addition, a further 21% cite the crumbling school buildings that no longer meet the requirements as a problem. As we all know, this is not an unknown problem. It feels like every young person who goes to school can name examples, such as gyms in which a net hangs over the children's heads to catch falling chunks of the falling ceiling, absolutely unhygienic toilet facilities that are damaged in many places or the typical mold in the classroom. Once again, this shows that money is urgently needed in the schools, which the rulers are of course not giving away.
However, this is not surprising, as the politicians of this state are definitely not "our politicians" and they obviously do not represent the interests of the people in any way. Why invest in the education of the people when you can also arm the military and subsidize large companies? After all, the money helps those people who are actually served by the politicians in the capitalist system. The rich money bags of the bourgeoisie.