AfD on education

The AfD wants an education system that is politically neutral and built on performance. Schools should also teach practical knowledge about the economy, social insurance and investing. Universities should attract top talent and make Germany a leader in innovation.

The AfD wants schools that focus on performance. Schools should be politically neutral. Children should also learn about money and the economy there. Universities should attract the best people. This should lead to new ideas in Germany.

Schooling and vocational training should promote performance and talent; the party says the performance principle no longer holds in schools and points to gaps in basic math and German. Practical lessons on social insurance, the economy and investing would start in school. Universities should win first-rate minds from Germany and abroad. As future fields, the platform names not only auto making, mechanical engineering and chemicals but also dual-fluid nuclear technology, space technology, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. Education is meant to include social skills alongside knowledge and manual ability.

The AfD wants to preserve the tiered school system with its different school types and raise requirements at all schools. In the platform's view, apprentices and first-year students lack basic knowledge despite better grades. A preschool year is meant to prepare children who are behind for regular lessons.

Germany has different types of schools. The AfD wants to keep it that way. Schools should ask more of students. Classes should get smaller. There should be a preschool for children who still need help before school starts.

Moving between school types should remain possible, and highly gifted children should get special support. Class sizes are to shrink at all school types. The Abitur (university entrance diploma) should again prove readiness for university, and lower and intermediate school diplomas should qualify students for vocational training. The AfD wants binding criteria for admission to the Gymnasium. The platform calls private schools a useful addition. The needs-based preschool is meant to make up for developmental delays and weak German skills.

The AfD wants to relax compulsory school attendance and replace it with a duty to be educated. It argues that the state no longer adequately secures children's right to education. Students' well-being is to be the guiding concern.

Today all children must go to a school. The AfD wants to relax this rule. Children would still have to learn, but not always in a school. The AfD says the state no longer does enough for education.

The platform describes Germany's school attendance requirement as especially strict compared with other countries. It would be replaced by a duty to receive an education. According to the platform, children have a right to education that the state must guarantee. Students' well-being is to take priority in the change.

The AfD wants to keep special-needs schools (Förderschulen) and make them the usual place of learning again for children with special educational needs. According to the platform, inclusion should proceed only with a sense of proportion. It says special schools offer support that regular schools cannot provide.

Special schools are for children who need extra help. The AfD wants to keep these schools. Children with special needs should usually go there. The AfD says they get more help there than in other schools.

Joint classes should give children a sense of achievement without overburdening students and teachers. They should also not slow down classmates' learning. The platform sees special schools as an educational opportunity for children with special needs.

The AfD demands that teachers stay politically neutral and that schools be free of political advocacy. Students should form their own political views and be able to voice them without fear of disadvantages.

The AfD wants teachers not to recommend any party at school. They should also not call on students to join protests. Students should be able to say what they think. No one should treat them badly for it.

According to the platform, curricula and textbooks should not prescribe political ways of thinking. Students should be protected from reprisals and discrimination by teachers or classmates. Teachers should neither give voting recommendations nor call for participation in demonstrations.

The AfD wants schools to have modern IT but to use digital tools only where they make sense and ease the workload. The primary school years should largely do without digital devices because that is where reading, writing and arithmetic are learned.

Schools should have good computers. But the AfD does not want tablets everywhere in class. In the first four school years, children should learn mostly without digital devices. That is when they learn to read, write and do math. Online classes should be avoided if possible.

The platform considers up-to-date technology necessary mainly for computer science classes, technical vocational training, and responsible use of AI. In the AfD's view, teaching with tablets alone narrows the range of teaching methods. Online instruction should be avoided where possible.

The AfD wants to raise the standing of vocational education and strengthen vocational schools. In its view, the drive for ever higher shares of students earning the Abitur (university entrance diploma) endangers the supply of trainees in skilled trades.

The AfD wants to strengthen job training. Vocational schools should matter more. The party says too many young people aim for university. So companies cannot find enough trainees.

The platform calls Germany's dual training system, which combines work in a company with vocational school, a success. It complains that many training positions stay unfilled and that too many trainees drop out. Lower and intermediate secondary schools (Hauptschule and Realschule) should cooperate with companies and chambers of industry and crafts to become more attractive. The heading sums up the goal as "more master craftsmen instead of master's degrees." The AfD also wants to strengthen the disciplinary powers and legal security of teachers and schools.

The AfD rejects Islamic religious instruction in schools and wants no faith-based exemptions for Muslim students. Children with a migration background should first take mandatory German classes until they can follow regular lessons. The party says this is how it wants to prevent parallel societies.

The AfD wants no Islamic classes in schools. Muslim students should get no exceptions. For example, they should take part in swimming lessons. Children with weak German should learn German first.

The platform wants to stop the influence of political Islam in schools. As an example of exemptions it rejects, it names being excused from swimming and physical education. The AfD argues that this is the only way to avoid parallel societies. The platform describes the integration of migrants as a challenge for the school system because many lack prior schooling and language skills. As long as children do not know enough German for regular classes, mandatory German instruction should take priority.

The AfD considers the Bologna reform a failure and wants to bring back the earlier Diplom and Magister degrees. In its view, the Europe-wide alignment of degree programs has made university studies too school-like and curtailed academic freedom.

The AfD wants the old Diplom and Magister degrees back. Today most students earn a bachelor's or master's degree. The party says university has become too much like school. It wants to change that.

The Bologna Process is the Europe-wide alignment of degree programs around bachelor's and master's degrees. The platform argues that it has made switching universities harder and that employers criticize the qualifications of bachelor's graduates. The division of studies into modules would be dropped. The AfD also wants to abolish the accreditation of degree programs, which the platform calls bureaucracy.

The AfD wants to give universities more guaranteed core funding so that they depend less on external grants. Research and teaching should remain independent of political, economic and financial interests.

The AfD wants to give universities more fixed money. Then researchers need to seek less outside money. They have more time for research and teaching. Universities should be allowed to pick their own students.

External grants are funds researchers apply for from outside sponsors on top of regular budgets. According to the platform, professors and staff should not spend their time on such applications. Universities should be allowed to select applicants through standardized aptitude tests and entrance exams. The right to award doctorates should rest with universities alone, and events should take place without politically motivated disruptions. The platform calls for tuition fees for students from countries outside the European Economic Area. Non-university institutes such as Fraunhofer and Max Planck should also depend less on political directives.