Grüne on education

The Greens want to expand and strengthen integrated comprehensive schools so children learn together for longer. In the long run, the tracked school system is to be overcome, because in the party's view early sorting ties educational chances to family background.

Children should go to school together for longer. So the Greens want more comprehensive schools. Smaller comprehensive schools should also be allowed. This helps mostly in rural areas. Later, the split into three school types should end.

The minimum size for comprehensive schools is to be lowered to improve access, especially in rural areas. In pilot projects, integrated comprehensive schools would add elementary grades, making one school from grade 1 to 13 possible. Oberschulen (combined lower secondary schools) should be able to become comprehensive schools, and school networks with a shared upper level are to be advanced. Gymnasien (academic-track schools) are to become more permeable. Homework is to be done at school as part of all-day programs, supported by teaching staff.

The Greens aim to make learning materials free in Lower Saxony, especially digital ones. Tablets and laptops are to count as learning materials because, in the party's view, education should be free from the start.

School materials should be free in Lower Saxony. This is most important for digital media. Tablets and laptops should count as learning materials. Money from school support clubs should only pay for extras.

Digital devices are to be officially recognized as learning materials. Money from school support associations should go only to additional offerings. It should not be used to pay for the core tasks of schools.

The Greens want to do away with repeating a grade and with forced transfers to a lower school type, because in the party's view these experiences harm a child's further education. Gymnasien and Realschulen (academic and intermediate secondary schools) should keep their students through the end of lower secondary level.

Children should no longer have to repeat a grade. They should also not be forced to change schools. Gymnasien and Realschulen should support their students until they finish. Comprehensive schools should start with smaller classes. Fewer young people should leave school without a diploma.

The platform points out that most European countries manage without this practice. In particular, the common practice of transferring students down after grade six is to end. As long as such transfers exist, the schools taking in these children are to be structurally strengthened. Integrated comprehensive schools should generally start with smaller classes, which should also be planned for when new ones are founded. The share of young people leaving without a diploma is also to fall further.

The Greens want to give schools more educational freedom and change bureaucratic rules accordingly. Model schools are to decide more on their own, and in the longer term schools should be allowed to work without grades up to eighth grade.

Schools should decide more for themselves. The Greens want to set up model schools for this. Rules should help schools, not slow them down. Later, schools should be able to go without grades up to grade 8. Longer internships should also count.

Room for projects, cross-subject learning, self-directed learning time and social learning is to grow. Model schools would get more leeway in staffing, learning content, and mixed-age and cross-subject work. For grades and school-track recommendations, schools should be able to use other forms of assessment and feedback. Achievements outside school, such as longer internships, should be eligible for recognition.

The Greens want to further develop inclusive schools, which are to replace Förderschulen (special-needs schools) in the long run, and stand by the timetable for phasing those out. The guideline is the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; truancy is also to drop markedly.

All children should go to school together. This includes children with disabilities. Special-needs schools should no longer exist later on. New schools must be built without barriers. Fewer children should skip school or drop out.

For new school buildings and major renovations, barrier-free infrastructure would be mandatory in tenders. The state competence center for accessibility is to advise on school construction and also be open to associations and companies. The state action plan is to be developed further, reporting on participation expanded, and school inclusion studied by researchers. Against school absenteeism, the platform relies on more school social work and outreach social work in neighborhoods.

The Greens want to stop treating truancy by teenagers as an administrative offense. The aim, according to the platform, is to motivate young people to return to school rather than punish them.

Some teenagers do not go to school. Today they can be fined for this. The Greens want to end that. They would rather help teenagers want to go back to school.

The platform considers coercive detention especially counterproductive. This is a short period of confinement that can be ordered when a fine is not paid. In the future, violating compulsory schooling should no longer be sanctioned as an administrative offense against the teenagers themselves. The focus should be on motivating them to attend school.

The Greens want to support schools that practice inclusion with more staff, better equipment and clear legal rules. Basic special-education staffing would be introduced at secondary schools, and teams drawn from different professions would be expanded.

In inclusive schools, children with and without disabilities learn together. The Greens want to give these schools more staff. Special-education teachers should work there permanently. Therapists and social workers should help too.

Special-education teachers would become a permanent part of mainstream schools, with clearly assigned duties. Other professions such as speech therapy, occupational therapy, child care and school social work would be added, and support services would be applied for and funded in a uniform way. The platform wants to end lower pay for therapeutic staff and involuntary part-time work. The regional centers for school inclusion would become a regional, easy-to-reach advisory system that also ties in the language education centers. As a stopgap, ombuds offices would help children and families whose needs schools cannot currently meet.

The Greens want schools to promote and recognize students' first and family languages. An overall plan for multilingualism would be developed for all school types and put into practice step by step.

Many children speak a language other than German at home. The Greens want schools to support these languages. There should be a plan for all schools. Language support should also grow.

A survey would show which languages are spoken at schools and serve as the basis for the plan. To recruit teachers for first- and family-language classes, foreign qualifications would be recognized faster and a degree program for heritage-language teaching would be set up. Multilingual teaching and language support would be expanded. Diversity among teachers would also be encouraged.

The Greens want to turn all schools into compulsory all-day schools, running four days a week from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. The school day would combine learning, physical activity, creative phases and programs by outside partners rather than mere afternoon supervision.

The Greens want all schools to be all-day schools. Children would be there four days a week from 8 to 3. Learning, sports and creative time would take turns. Clubs and music schools would take part.

According to the platform, quality requires qualified staff, good buildings and equipment, and reliable lessons. Partners such as music schools, artists, youth associations and sports clubs would get dependable conditions for long-term cooperation. Daily exercise time is planned, along with spaces for retreat and rest. Existing after-school centers would be folded into the expansion, and schools would develop into family centers offering counseling.

The Greens want to launch a state program for school meals that gives municipalities financial support. Every child at every school should be able to get a warm, healthy meal, especially children from low-income households.

The Greens want good food at all schools. Every child should be able to get a warm meal. This includes children from poor families. The state would give towns and cities money for this.

Meals would be made from healthy, regional and seasonal ingredients with as high a share of organic food as possible. The platform justifies this with the growing role of nutrition as all-day schooling expands. Vocational schools for cooking and home economics would cooperate with workshops that train in this field. This is also meant to create training places.

The Greens want to use a Niedersachsenfonds (Lower Saxony investment fund) to pay for energy retrofits and modernization of school buildings, easing the burden on municipalities. The platform describes many schools as run-down and not accessible, and says municipalities cannot cover the need alone.

Many school buildings are old and in bad shape. The Greens want to fix and modernize them. The buildings should also use less energy. The state would help towns and cities with money.

The renovation backlog would be tackled as a whole instead of through costly piecemeal repairs. The federal government, the state and municipalities would act together and also consider ventilation and hygiene, as a lesson from the pandemic. New school construction guidelines would enable buildings suited to inclusion and modern teaching.

The Greens want money from the Digitalpakt (the federal-state school digitalization fund) to reach schools faster and want schools to get better support with digital tools. Digital tools should be embedded in teaching and serve as a means, not an end in themselves.

The Greens want schools to be more digital. Money for this should reach schools faster. Experts should look after the computers and networks. Children and teachers should learn to use media safely.

More institutes and professorships would support digitalization and anchor it more firmly in teacher training and continuing education. For secure IT infrastructure, solutions would be developed with the municipalities that run the schools, such as a dedicated training track for school IT administration and pools of administrators serving several schools. Media literacy, data protection and network security would play an important role in teacher training and in class. Teachers, students and parents would be made aware of disinformation, cyberbullying and cybergrooming.

The Greens want to make education for sustainable development and global learning a fixed part of curricula in daycare centers and all types of schools. The platform treats both as cross-cutting topics in which future challenges are addressed and solutions worked out.

Children should learn about sustainability in daycare and school. Sustainability means living so the planet stays healthy later too. The Greens want this written firmly into the curricula. Animal welfare is part of it.

Cross-subject and hands-on approaches would be promoted, including animal welfare. Out-of-school learning sites and projects would be strengthened, and One World promoters would continue to receive support. To make room for this, the platform considers a slimming down of curricula necessary.

The Greens want teachers at primary, lower secondary and Oberschule schools to be paid, as a rule, at civil-service grade A13, and want to improve working conditions in schools. Schools would also be relieved of administrative work through additional staff.

Primary school teachers often earn less than other teachers. The Greens want them to earn the same. Work at schools should become easier. More staff should take over the office work.

The platform argues that A13 has also been legally required since the master's programs for these teaching careers were restructured. The recommendations of the working-time commission would be put into practice, for example by adjusting the reduced teaching load for older teachers. Primary and lower secondary schools would also get senior posts, such as deputy principals at primary schools. Principals would get their own job profile and targeted training with supervision and coaching. More administrative staff, school social work and educational assistants would relieve small primary schools in particular, along with a regional advisory structure for teachers.

The Greens want to recruit enough teachers for all schools and thereby improve classroom coverage. To do so, they would reassess demand, train more teachers and special-education teachers, and prepare career changers better.

Many schools do not have enough teachers. The Greens want to check exactly how many are missing. Then more people should be trained for the job. People from other jobs should also be better prepared to teach.

Because of the shortage, relief measures and reforms would be phased in through step-by-step plans. The special-education degree in Lower Saxony would offer the specializations 'vision' and 'hearing'. Foreign qualifications would be recognized more easily, and teacher training would include more practice through regular, possibly paid school internships. Career changers would get a genuine training and preparation phase. As long as teachers are lacking, schools would be free to bring in other staff and expand multi-professional teams.

The Greens want to reform teacher training so that it is organized by grade levels rather than by school types. This is meant to prepare teachers better for the growing demands of the profession.

Today teachers train for one type of school, such as the Gymnasium. The Greens want to change that. Teachers would train for certain grade levels instead. This should prepare them better for the job.

The special-education degree would be tied more closely into this grade-level model. A training drive would prepare teachers for individualized and inclusive teaching in the digital age. Both phases of teacher training would be geared more toward integrated schools and their cross-subject, project-based approach. The role of special-education teachers would be defined more clearly and their career prospects widened.

The Greens want to make dual vocational training (combined company and school training) more attractive to secure skilled workers. They plan a skilled-labor initiative with the chambers of commerce and the skilled trades, plus better conditions for trainees in transport, housing and training quality.

The Greens want more young people to choose job training in a company. There are not enough skilled workers. Trainees should get a cheap ticket for buses and trains. There should be dorms for trainees. A new office should check whether training is good.

Trainees are to get a statewide 365-euro annual ticket for public transport. Housing such as trainee dorms is planned at vocational school locations for those who travel far. Free school transport is to be extended to upper secondary students and vocational schools. An independent, publicly funded office would evaluate training quality in companies and schools and recommend steps where problems exist. Career counseling is to be expanded and schooling linked more closely with training.

The Greens want master craftsman training in the skilled trades to be free of charge. They argue it is unequal that a master's degree at a university carries no fees while this training does.

The Greens want master craftsman training to be free. Today it costs a lot of money. A master's degree at a university has no fees. The Greens think this is unfair.

According to the platform, master craftsman training in the trades costs up to 10,000 euros. A master's degree, by contrast, has no tuition fees. The Greens want to remove these costs for people training to become master craftsmen.

The Greens want to modernize vocational schools, equip them digitally and develop them into centers for training and continuing education. To address the teacher shortage, they rely on career changers, better pay for practical-skills teachers and more university places.

The Greens want to make vocational schools more modern. The schools should get better technology. They do not have enough teachers. So people from trades and industry should teach there too. Teachers for practical skills should get more pay.

A recruitment initiative is meant to make teaching more attractive to people from the trades, commerce and industry. Practical-skills teachers would start at pay grade A10 with better promotion prospects, and more university places for vocational teaching are planned. Vocational schools are to become competence centers that also offer continuing education and retraining, with more independence. So-called smart factories, learning workshops modeled on digitally run companies, are to be set up statewide. Unions would be allowed to inform students at vocational schools about their work.

The Greens want to write inclusion at vocational schools into the state school law. Joint classes are to be expanded across all types of vocational schools, with the staff and funding required.

The Greens want to put inclusion at vocational schools into law. Inclusion means: people with and without disabilities learn together. There should be more staff and money for this. Teachers should get extra training.

The plan includes further training for teachers and improved special-needs support. The Greens want to restore the special education degree program for vocational schools in Hanover, which the state government cut. Schools and the bodies that run them are to receive advice and support when setting up inclusive learning groups.

The Greens want to give universities reliable, needs-based core funding and reduce their dependence on third-party grants. This is meant to provide planning certainty; the platform rejects the cuts made by the outgoing state government.

The Greens want to give universities more steady money from the state. Universities should depend less on outside grants. Outside grants are funds for single projects, for example. This helps universities plan better.

The state would reliably co-finance federal and EU funds so that Lower Saxony's universities can make good use of those programs. Universities are to have their own profile and room to try new approaches; excellence should count teaching and study conditions alongside research and include small subjects. To keep research independent of authoritarian states, the state would build up regional expertise, especially on China.

The Greens want tuition-free study and therefore want to scrap the fees charged to long-term students. In their view, tuition fees are a social barrier; attending university should not depend on parents' income.

The Greens want university without fees. People who study for a very long time must pay fees today. The Greens want to end these fees. Studying should not depend on parents' money.

Universities are to open up further and become more diverse, especially for people from families without an academic background. The Studienqualitätsmittel (funds for study quality) are to stay, and students should again have a decisive say over how they are used. This money is meant for teaching and study quality, not for filling gaps in building maintenance.

The Greens want to make it easier to move between vocational training and university and to expand dual study programs. Trainees should be able to earn a university degree alongside their vocational qualification.

The Greens want to connect job training and university better. Trainees should find it easier to study too. There should be more dual study programs. Dual means: you learn in a company and at a university. Universities of applied sciences should be made stronger.

Flexible models, such as part-time options, are meant to coordinate training and study and spread them over a longer period. Universities of applied sciences are to be strengthened further. Working people are to get new routes into part-time study as academic continuing education. For students in dual and trial programs, the standard period of study would be applied more flexibly to prevent overload.

The Greens want to push at the federal level for student financing that makes university possible regardless of income. In the platform's view, today's BAföG (federal student aid) does not deliver equal educational opportunity. Part-time students should also be able to receive it.

The Greens want to change BAföG. BAföG is money from the state for students. Part-time students should get it too. Everyone should be able to study, no matter how much money their family has.

The platform backs the federal government's plan to open up BAföG and make it less dependent on parents' income. In addition, part-time students should become eligible. The allowance for a student's own income should also apply to students in dual study programs. The Greens want to achieve this through federal-level action.

The Greens want to strengthen research from basic science to applied projects, especially where it concerns the climate-friendly transformation. Additional professorships for climate protection are to be created. Results should reach practical use more quickly.

The Greens want to strengthen research. Research on the climate matters most to them. There should be new professors for climate protection. New ideas should reach everyday use faster.

Knowledge and technology transfer should be built into new calls for proposals and funding programs from the start. Gender-sensitive medicine and diversity should become part of medical curricula and of physicians' continuing training. The platform calls for transparency in risky and militarily relevant research and a more critical approach to dual-use research. Alternatives to animal testing are to be funded so that such tests become unnecessary in the long run. Science communication should also receive more support.

The Greens want to give students and staff at universities more rights to take part in decisions. The platform argues that universities depend on a democratic culture and working academic self-governance.

The Greens want more say at universities. Students and staff should help decide more things. Doctoral students should have a say too. University committees should become stronger.

All groups who teach, work or study at universities should be able to participate, explicitly including doctoral students. Governing bodies, especially the faculty council and the senate, are to gain more weight. In addition, teaching and study matters should be anchored more firmly in university leadership.

The Greens want the state's universities to be more closely connected across Europe and the world, and want to remove obstacles to study and research abroad. Legal rules are to be changed so that studying digitally at several locations becomes easier.

The Greens want universities to work more with other countries. Students should be able to go abroad more easily. People should also be able to study online at several places. The rules should be changed for that.

Universities are to receive targeted support so they succeed in European funding programs. This is meant to strengthen Lower Saxony as a place for science in Europe and, according to the platform, advance the European idea. The technology for a virtual cross-border campus already exists, the platform says. The legal framework should now follow.

The Greens want to expand adult education and raise the budget for continuing education to one percent of the total education budget. They argue that changes in work and society make more funding necessary.

Adults should be able to keep learning too. The Greens want to spend more money on this. One percent of the education money should go to adult learning. There should also be more online courses.

More money is to go to language courses and education for refugees, basic education, second-chance schooling, and staff training and recruitment. Refugee women should have access to these programs, for example through child care or language courses for women only. Educational counseling that is independent of any provider is to be strengthened. In addition, more online formats are to be created and instructors given suitable digital equipment.

The Greens want to expand programs for basic education, literacy and catching up on school diplomas, and make them free of charge in the future. In the platform's view, high participation fees deter people.

Some adults cannot read and write well. Others want to finish school later in life. The Greens want more courses for them. The courses should cost nothing.

The platform sees these programs as the basis for further education and for entering the job market. It considers them especially important for people in precarious circumstances or with little formal education. The courses should be easy to access, reach people in their own neighborhoods and address both younger and older people.

The Greens want to recruit more teachers and early childhood educators with a migration background and expand native-language instruction. Colonial history and critical perspectives on racism are to become a fixed part of the curriculum. A state program is meant to promote a culture of diversity.

The Greens want more teachers and daycare staff with a migration background. There should be more classes in children's native languages. Schools should teach about colonial history and racism. A state program should support diversity.

Native-language instruction is to be offered in math and science subjects as well, and the range of foreign languages is to grow. Foreign professional qualifications in education are to be recognized faster and more easily. More initial and continuing training in diversity skills is planned for teaching staff. Curricula, textbooks and materials are to be revised to include colonial history, critical views on racism and the history of migrants' countries of origin. A state program would, among other things, fund diversity training for state employees and educational institutions. Specialists should also be able to offer safe spaces and empowerment programs for people affected by discrimination.

The Greens want to introduce a required school subject called "Religions and Worldviews" that is tied to no denomination and grounded in religious studies. Denominational schools are to become, in dialogue with the religious communities, schools open to children of every faith.

The Greens want a new school subject for all children. It is called Religions and Worldviews. It does not belong to any one church. Schools tied to one faith should open up to all children.

The subject is meant to convey different perspectives. Representatives of various religious communities are to be able to present their own beliefs in it. The conversion of denominational schools is to happen in dialogue with the religious communities. The platform bases both on freedom of religion, the separation of church and state, and equal treatment of religious communities.

The Greens want to give the Landeszentrale für politische Bildung (state agency for civic education) more money and expand it. The platform sees it as playing a key role because disinformation threatens public debate. Other civic education providers are also to receive better funding.

The state agency for civic education explains politics to people. The Greens want to give it more money. Schools should also teach more about democracy. Teachers should get extra training for this.

The platform describes the agency as a leader in digital democracy education and accuses the SPD and CDU of failing to strengthen it. Recognized adult education providers are to be paid more for civic education. In schools, democracy education is to be supported through teacher training and accompanying projects. The same is to apply to organized sports in the state.