The “DigitalPakt Schule” has been active for three years now. Its task is to drive forward the digitalization of schools in all 16 federal states. On September 27, the D21 initiative published the “21st Century Schools” study. This sheds light on the current situation of digital school lessons from the perspective of parents.
Pupils grow up in a digital world
Today’s world is digital. Therefore, the focus of education needs to be set differently. For today’s generation, using digital devices such as desktop PCs, smartphones or tablets, communicating via them, shopping online, consuming media content or obtaining information and actively participating in social media channels is part of everyday life. However, digital skills that are important for future careers are hardly part of everyday school life. In order to strengthen these skills, in addition to the basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic, and to enable pupils to act independently in a modern society, further efforts must be made to digitize schools.
Prerequisites for implementation must be met
In order to implement the goals of the DigitalPakt, it is imperative that schools have high-performance, up-to-date equipment and a digital infrastructure. Everyday teaching can be built on this foundation and only then can future-oriented media education concepts be implemented. Above all, staff must be competently trained in the use of digital tools and their application. In the recently published study by Initiative D21, parents see particular deficits in the digital skills of teachers, in the digital infrastructure and in the ability of schools to use digital teaching methods effectively.
Different results by federal state
What is striking about the results of the “21st Century Schools” study is that there are some serious differences between the federal states. When asked whether their child has already worked with digital devices, three out of four parents answered in the affirmative – 86% in Bremen and 81% in North Rhine-Westphalia. In Thuringia (63%) and Hesse (64%), on the other hand, the use of digital devices is less widespread. According to the study, the digital transformation in the education system is not solely due to the “DigitalPakt Schule”, as the increased use of digital tools in the classroom was particularly noticeable during the coronavirus pandemic.
No nationwide digital education infrastructure
There is a great need for action in the expansion of the digital education infrastructure, which is not yet available throughout Germany. Just 62 per cent of parents state that their child has access to the internet at school. In five federal states, only every second pupil has access to the internet. But even in Bremen (75 percent) and Berlin (71 percent), the leading federal states, not all schools have internet access.
Tablets (74%) are the most commonly used devices, followed by smartphones (72%). The study also makes it obvious that private devices are predominantly used, especially mobile devices.
Public trust and digitalization belong together
In the perception of parents, their trust in the state correlates with the central task of providing a modern school education: If parents believe that their child’s school perceives digitalization as an opportunity, their trust in the state is much higher (62%) than if they did not trust their child’s school to do so (12%).
Dr. Jens Brandenburg (Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research) said with regard to the study that the digitalization of schools has arrived in the perception of parents and that it is time to accelerate the DigitalPakt. He continued confidently: “Digitalization offers many opportunities for individual support and modern learning methods. We want to take advantage of these opportunities.”
Implementation of the study
2,353 parents with at least one child old enough to go to school took part in the study. In an online survey, parents were able to provide answers on various topics, e.g. “Status quo of digitally supported teaching”, “Infrastructure and equipment”, “Implementation and perceived impact” etc. The online survey was part of the “eGovernment MONITOR 2022” study project and was conducted by the Kantar market research institute; the results are representative at a national level.
Experts such as Prof. Dr. Andreas Schleicher (Director of the Department of Education and Skills, OECD), Prof. Dr. Birgit Eickelmann (Professor of School Education, University of Paderborn) and Beth Havinga (Co-Founder and Managing Director, European Edtech Alliance) supplemented the study with their assessments.
You can download the full study here:
https://initiatived21.de/app/uploads/2022/09/21stcenturyschools_studie.pdf
About the Initiative D21 e. V.
The network for the digital society – Initiative D21 for short – is an association of around 200 member companies and institutions as well as stakeholders from politics, administration, business and science. aconium GmbH is also a long-standing partner of the non-profit D21 association.