Abstract:

In the face of COVID-19, our knowledge and information societies are not only in a health policy and economic crisis but also in an educational crisis, because our surrounding world has changed socially and medially almost overnight. Within days, this situation has created new interrelations between proximity and distance. This is particularly true in the case of school education, which in many respects has been catapulted from one day to the next into a digital world that in many areas is beyond its capacity since not every country is equally well equipped. While there are countries that have been using digital media in classroom teaching for years and both, teachers and students are familiar with its use, there are countries like Germany that are at the bottom of the league in many areas of digitalization. Despite state-supported programs such as “Gute Schule 2020” (good school 2020) or the “Digitalpakt” (digital pact), which are designed to drive the digital revolution, at German Middle schools the ratio for laptops is 67.8:1 and for tablets 41.4:1. In the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia, which will be the focus of this paper, it’s even worse. Here 82.2 students have to share one laptop while 58.1 have to share a tablet. Furthermore, in pre-Corona-times, only 3.2% of all German teachers and 0.9% of all teachers in North Rhine-Westphalia received digital devices from their employer. In comparison, in Denmark, 91.1% of all teachers are equipped with digital devices through their employer. Considering this, it is not very much surprising that only 16,5% of all German 8th-graders attend a school where internet-based applications for collaborative working are available (international average: 63.1%; Finland: 97.1%; Denmark: 96.8%). Therefore, critics argue that 80 to 90% of distant teaching will be covered through printed worksheets instead of digital methods. In the case that we go digital, in particular, children from low socio-economic backgrounds will be left behind since they do not own the proper equipment to participate in digital learning, which will lead to a digital divide. Even though, studies indicate that there is a high degree of digitalization in German households, most digital end devices are smartphones and thus, not suited for digital learning.

Therefore, as a response to the ongoing pandemic, the government initiated an on-demand sharing-system to provide the necessary hardware to enable distant learning as a substitute during the crisis. This can not be seen as a long term solution to improve Germany’s hitherto rather weak digital performance regarding school teaching and education.

This paper is going to investigate the measures, such as “Logineo NRW”, taken by the German government to safeguard educational equality during the Covid-19 pandemic. Thereby, it will also discuss if these actions can adjust the transition to online education for everyone or if digitalization will be a utopia.

Keywords:

Digital divide, digitalization, distant learning, Covid-19, digital classroom teaching.