Former Federal Minister Thomas de Maizière began his political career as State Secretary in the Mecklenburg-Western Pomeranian Ministry of Education and is now Chairman of the Telekom Foundation.
Image: Robert Gommlich
A new survey shows that parents and students are surprisingly positive about the Corona catch-up program at schools. A conversation with Thomas de Maizière, the initiator of the study.
Mr. de Maizière, the Telekom Foundation, which you chair, has just published the results of a survey that you initiated and which surprises on one point: Parents and students are relatively satisfied with the corona catch-up measures at school. That almost sounds like the all-clear, as if there were only partial learning deficits.
This survey is part of a series that we have been conducting with the Allensbach Institute for the past three years on the question “How do young people learn?”. This time the focus was on how students learn after the drastic corona measures. So we ask those affected, the students in secondary school, and parents of this age group. And everyone states: There were such offers almost everywhere, whereby most students believe that their learning deficits have become smaller. This is of course a subjective assessment. How accurate it is can only be determined by comparing it with objective data. You can find that good or bad. But before that, it was said that young people were totally unsettled by Corona. After surveying more than a thousand students, we can safely say: That doesn’t seem to be the case. On the negative side, one could say that students underestimate their learning deficits and think that everything is fine now. That would be bad.
