Education experts, academics, entrepreneurs and municipal decision-makers have been working on key issues relating to the digitalization of education since its foundation. The result is a catalog of political recommendations for action, which were discussed at the conference with the motto “Better learning”.
Digital change in education must be designed for the future
The central demand of the Education Pact is a national action plan and an investment program for education in the digital world. Stakeholders from politics and society now agree that the digital transformation must be made fit for the future. Digital education even made it onto this year’s national IT summit as a key topic. Now it’s time to shape it, as was made clear at the event.
“The time of lighthouses is over,” said Martin Hüppe, Managing Director of Bündnis für Bildung e.V., for example, who presented six theses on the topic and called for, among other things, systemic approaches that address the obstacles already identified in the education system. In addition to start-up funding, such as the DigitalPakt#D promised by Federal Education Minister Johanna Wanka and her Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), a sustainable funding concept is needed. This should be developed in cooperation between the federal government, federal states and local authorities. Common goals and a framework for action should be defined.
Investment volume of 5 billion euros
Federal Education Minister Wanka had announced a pact between the federal and state governments to promote the necessary digital infrastructure in German schools. The basic idea: the federal government will invest five billion euros in the digital infrastructure of schools within five years. In return, the federal states undertake to develop corresponding educational concepts and to tackle the reorganization of teacher training and further training.
Using synergies between the federal and state governments
The Digital Pact is part of the BMBF’s recently published strategy “Education offensive for the digital knowledge society”. With this, the federal government is presenting a framework for action for the digital transformation of the education system. Five fields of action have been defined: 1) imparting digital education, 2) creating an efficient digital infrastructure, 3) creating a modern legal framework, 4) supporting organizational development, 5) exploiting the potential of internationalization. In addition to the Digital Pact, the BMBF is also funding a concept study for a so-called “school cloud” as part of the strategy, supporting the establishment of regional digitalization competence centers and the OER information point, which will bundle free educational materials in the future and serve as a first point of contact. The federal states have also set themselves a framework for action within the framework of the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (KMK) with the draft strategy “Education in the digital world”. Now that the draft has been discussed with a broad public, the final version is expected by the end of the year at the latest. The parallel efforts of the federal and state governments show many similarities and complement each other. The synergies between the two strategies should now be used as effectively as possible, also in order to use resources effectively in accordance with the federal distribution of competencies. Renate Radon, co-initiator of the Digital Education Pact for Germany and member of the management board of Microsoft Germany, suggested expanding the proposed Digital Pact to include stakeholders from business and society. This is the only way to create the conditions for a digital knowledge society along the entire education chain.