AfD on education

The AfD wants to keep Bavaria's school system of Mittelschule, Realschule, Gymnasium and Förderschule (special-needs school) and apply the performance principle in all of them. Vocational training should gain more esteem, the Mittelschule should be strengthened and fewer children should move on to Gymnasium. It rejects interference by the federal government and the EU in education policy.

The AfD wants to keep the four types of school in Bavaria. Performance should count everywhere. The Mittelschule should prepare students better for job training. Fewer children should go to Gymnasium. Bavaria should decide on its own schools.

The platform justifies the tracked system by pointing to support based on individual abilities, and names movement between school types and good German skills as preconditions. All school types should provide a broad general education and do more to foster manual skills; the Bundeswehr should be allowed to give information at schools. Children are to be shielded from what the AfD calls political indoctrination and early sexualization, and should develop a sense of home. Every child should be able to swim by the end of elementary school, supported by a catch-up program with additional swimming instructors. Trainee teachers and teachers without civil-servant status should get continuous contracts, and the state should buy and maintain school IT equipment.

The AfD wants to create ways to obtain an education outside the conventional school system. Other forms of schooling and learning should be permitted if learning progress is demonstrated. The platform points to experiences from the COVID-19 period.

Children should also be allowed to learn outside regular school. They must show that they are learning enough. The AfD gives the experience of the COVID-19 period as the reason.

Under the slogan "education instead of compulsory schooling," the platform calls for more freedom in learning. The condition for alternative forms is proof that children are making corresponding progress. Social interaction is to be taken into account in every form of learning.

The AfD wants Bavaria's universities to focus support on STEM subjects and traditional degree programs and considers gender studies chairs unnecessary. It rejects quotas based on sex, gender identity or migration background. In the program's view, academic freedom is threatened by ideological influence.

The AfD wants more support for subjects like math, technology and science. It says professorships for gender studies are not needed. It is against quotas at universities. A quota is a fixed share of jobs for one group. Nobody should be treated worse for not using gender-inclusive language.

Universities are to receive reliable basic state funding that is not tied to ideological conditions. Nobody should be disadvantaged for not using gender-inclusive language. The program criticizes the influence of what it sees as politicized climate research and of gender theory, and complains that dissenting scholars are obstructed. The AfD also counts military research at universities as part of research freedom. It regards quotas as a restriction on occupational freedom and as unequal treatment. At the same time, professors and mid-level academic staff are to get secure and acceptable working conditions.

The AfD wants to preserve German as the language of scholarship at Bavarian universities and rejects degree programs taught only in English. At the same time, it acknowledges English as the global language of science and wants to promote foreign language skills.

The AfD wants universities to keep teaching and doing research in German. It is against degree programs only in English. It still sees English as important. Students should be able to learn foreign languages well.

The program justifies the demand with the precision of expression it sees in the German language. There should be no degree programs taught purely in English. A broad range of courses is meant to strengthen the foreign language skills of students and academics.

The AfD wants to reduce universities' dependence on third-party funders and demands openness about projects paid for with externally raised money. The independence of research is to be protected.

Universities also get money from outside, for example from companies. This is called third-party funding. The AfD wants research to depend less on it. Citizens should be able to see what the money is for.

The program calls third-party funding an important building block for Bavaria as a research location. The goals and use of results from such research should be clear to taxpayers, as should the use of public money for private business purposes. Projects the AfD regards as purely ideologically driven should no longer be funded.

The AfD wants to restore the Diplom and Magister degrees and phase out bachelor's and master's programs. It justifies this with the strong reputation it says the German university system had before the Bologna reform.

The AfD wants the old degrees Diplom and Magister back. Bachelor's and master's degrees should end step by step. The state exam should stay. The AfD says the old system had a good name around the world.

The Staatsexamen (state examination) is to be kept. Only universities should be allowed to award doctorates, though especially well-suited graduates of universities of applied sciences should be able to do a doctorate at a Bavarian university. Universities of applied sciences should focus on applied research and teaching. Higher education institutions should be allowed to pick their students by their own standards. For legal education, the program calls for knowledge transfer, comparable performance requirements, careful use of German and digital skills.