AfD on education

The AfD wants to turn the final two years of kindergarten into a preschool. A binding curriculum with uniform standards is meant to prepare children for school.

The AfD wants to create a preschool. It would cover the last two years of kindergarten. All children would learn by the same plan. This should get them ready for school.

The preschool would get a learning and education plan that applies to everyone. Uniform educational standards would be added. According to the program, the goal is targeted support and a successful start in school. Compulsory schooling would not be extended.

The AfD wants more elementary school hours for German and math and would drop the first foreign language in grades 1 to 4 to make room. Children would start school only at age six, and handwriting would get more practice.

The AfD wants more German and math in elementary school. The first foreign language would be dropped in grades 1 to 4. Children would start school only at age six. They would write by hand more often. All children should learn to swim.

The cutoff date for school entry would be June 30, so that no child starts school at age five. The basic vocabulary to be taught by the end of grade 4 would rise from 700 to 1,000 words. The joined-up script known as Schulausgangsschrift would be mandatory from grade 1, with fixed time guidelines and more handwritten dictations. For swimming, the AfD wants to examine mobile teaching pools and set up a funding program to reduce the share of non-swimmers.

The AfD wants schools to put more weight on performance. This includes conduct grades from grade 1, the nine-year track to the Abitur at the Gymnasium (G9), the three-tier school system and more teacher-led instruction.

The AfD wants schools to demand more effort. There would be conduct grades from grade 1. These are grades for behavior and class work. The Gymnasium would again lead to the Abitur in nine years. Teachers would teach from the front of the class more often.

The program wants to separate students strictly by performance and promote the three-tier school system. Teachers should not be seen as learning coaches; their authority and that of principals is to be strengthened. Teacher-centered instruction would be at the heart of teacher training. Curricula would define fixed bodies of knowledge instead of competencies, and content such as gender mainstreaming, which the AfD calls ideological, would be removed. Memorizing and reciting poems would get more room in all school types.

The AfD wants to ban the approach known as "sex education of diversity" in daycare centers and schools and allow sex education only in biology class. It also says it wants to restore the political neutrality of schools.

The AfD wants to ban a certain kind of sex education. It deals with the diversity of gender and love. Sex education would only take place in biology class. Schools would fly only the state and national flags. Rainbow flags would not be allowed there.

Groups that work in schools or train teachers on this basis would lose all state funding. The WHO Standards for Sexuality Education in Europe from 2011 would be prohibited because the AfD sees them as a danger to child welfare. The party rejects puberty blockers and gender-affirming surgery for minors. The so-called extremism clause would be removed from the school law, as would funding for projects the AfD regards as left-green indoctrination.

The AfD wants to keep kindergartens, preschools and elementary schools free of digital devices through grade 6. A smartphone ban for the entire school day would be written into the school law.

The AfD wants no digital devices in daycare and elementary school. This would apply up to grade 6. Smartphones would be banned at school. The ban covers the whole school day and the school grounds.

The program calls the digitalization of education so far aimless and harmful to children. Digital tools would remain possible where they demonstrably help learning, make educational sense and ease teachers' workload. The state would provide money for an appropriate expansion of digital infrastructure in education.

The AfD wants to end the current inclusion policy in schools, which it calls chaotic. Instead, a dense network of well-equipped special-needs schools (Förderschulen) would be built.

Today children with and without disabilities often learn together. This is called inclusion. The AfD wants to end this policy. It wants to build more special-needs schools and equip them well. The state would train its own teachers for these schools.

The demand is tied to the goal of countering what the AfD sees as a falling level of education. The party points to studies such as the IQB education trend, PISA and IGLU. Brandenburg would again train special-needs teachers itself. At the same time, performance gaps within classes are to become smaller.

The AfD wants to limit the share of students with a migration background at public schools to a maximum of ten percent. Students with too little German would enter regular classes only after a language course and test; the party also plans a headscarf ban and a German-only rule on school grounds.

The AfD wants a limit for children from immigrant families at schools. At most ten percent of students should come from such families. Children with little German must first pass a language course and a test. Headscarves would be banned at schools. Everyone would have to speak German on school grounds.

The cap would apply to publicly run schools. Before moving to a regular class, students would take German support courses and a mandatory language test. The AfD justifies the headscarf ban with what it sees as growing Islamism in schools. All students would have to take part in joint sports and swimming lessons regardless of religious objections.

The AfD wants to shorten teacher training, make it more practical and return to the state examination. Administrative staff, more school psychologists and promotion posts are meant to relieve teachers and make the job more attractive.

Brandenburg does not have enough teachers. The AfD wants to make training shorter and more practical. A new training site would open in Frankfurt (Oder). Office staff would take work off teachers. There would be many more school psychologists.

Besides Potsdam and Cottbus-Senftenberg, Frankfurt (Oder) would become a third site for teacher training. Funding for the Refugee Teachers Program would be cut and moved to other teacher training measures. A scientifically monitored working-time study would identify sources of strain. The ratio of school psychologists to students would improve step by step from 1:10,000 to 1:1,000. Principals would get more release time for leadership tasks, and overload reports would be evaluated centrally.

The AfD wants to turn compulsory school attendance into a duty to be educated and allow homeschooling in a pilot project. It argues that the state no longer keeps its promise of the best educational opportunities.

Today all children must go to a school. The AfD wants to change that. Children could also learn at home. This would first be tried in a test project. Children would still have to learn.

The program points to countries with good education results where learning at home is legal. The rights and duties of parents and school authorities would be defined. In addition, monitoring tools would be examined to track whether educational goals are met.

The AfD wants to give universities reliable core funding instead of awarding government project grants. In its view, this is the only way to secure freedom of research and teaching.

The AfD wants to give universities more fixed money. Today they get a lot of money only for single projects. The AfD says this makes universities dependent. Universities should decide on their own courses of study.

According to the program, the growing share of third-party funding endangers universities' independence. Academia is to be protected from excessive bureaucracy. Universities would decide freely on the type and scope of the courses they offer. The AfD also wants to defend academic freedom against what it calls political correctness and criticizes fields such as gender studies as politicized.

The AfD wants to charge students from non-EU countries fees that cover the cost of their studies. This is meant to relieve taxpayers; the revenue would go toward better teaching.

The AfD wants fees for some students from abroad. This affects students from countries outside the EU. They would pay the cost of their studies themselves. The money would improve teaching at universities.

Bavaria serves as the model. According to the program, one in four students in Brandenburg now comes from abroad, and almost one in two at BTU Cottbus, mainly from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The AfD assumes most leave the state after graduating. It puts the cost of running the universities at just under half a billion euros a year and the number of foreign students at about 12,000.

The AfD wants an open-ended review of the Bologna reform. Brandenburg's universities would again be allowed to offer Magister and Diplom programs because the party believes the quality of studies has declined.

Universities used to award degrees called Magister and Diplom. Today there are mostly bachelor's and master's degrees. The AfD wants to allow the old degrees again. It says that studying has become worse.

The program describes the bachelor's degree as school-like and marked by unproductive pressure from frequent exams. The Magister, it says, left more room for self-organization and personal growth. The AfD cites a survey by the German Chambers of Industry and Commerce in which only 47 percent of companies were satisfied with bachelor's graduates.

The AfD wants to fund professorships on the history of East Germany (GDR) and on communism. The topic would again have a firm place in research and school lessons.

The AfD wants more research on East Germany and communism. Universities would get professorships for this. Students at school would also learn more about it. The professors should come from eastern Germany if possible.

According to the program, there is no longer a single chair for GDR history nationwide, and the SED State research group at Freie Universität Berlin has been winding down since October 2023. Federal funding was reportedly cut from 40 to eight million euros from 2024. The AfD believes originally communist ideas are spreading today in new forms. It also wants German culture, traditions and history to feature more in curricula, starting in elementary school.