Thread by @garritzmannj

What does the new 🚦 #Koalitionsvertrag promise in terms of #education (policy)? (from early childhood to adults)?

Quite a few remarkable things (although most of them formulated quite "fluffily" so I'm curious to see what the actual laws will look like).

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1st, recall that actually the federal gov is constitutionally NOT supposed to engage in education policy. The subnational Länder are responsible. Over the last years, however, there has already been a federalization/nationalization trend. The Ampel clearly wants to continue
(2/n)

Let's start with higherEd, research & development:

🚦 Promises:
1) increase public R&D spending to 3.5% of GDP (currently: 3.17). That's an ambitious target. From internat. perspective this would push Germany towards higher spenders.

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2) more coop. between federal & subnational gov in higherEd funding. Promise stays quite vague. Mentioned is ExcellenceIntitiative funding which shall continue + student aid (see below). They are offering to change the constitution if Länder want #anOfferYouCannotDecline

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3) want to reform the Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz (#ichbinhanna) to offer better long-term career options; yet, remains substantively entirely vague what they have in mind (besides putting a bit more emphasis on tenure-track programs).

(5/n)

4) major change re:financial student aid #BAföG (a) shall become less dependent on parental background (unclear whether paid to every student though), (b) switching back to a grant-system (rather than loan) & (c) increasing amounts. This = initial generous BAföG from 1970s!
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5) constitutionally guarantee children’s rights. Sounds super fluffy but might result in major change, depending on how (constitutional) courts interpret the policy.
@tomchevalier6
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6) want to increase education spending „considerably“ („deutlich“). Unclear how. This is LÄnder-area. Could go through ExcellenceInitiative, student aid, third party funding (DFG), & R&D spending, though.

(8/n)

7) early childcare: more focus on quality (I read: "rather than quantitative expansion") & VOLUNTARY whole-day offers) -> both indicates a likely middle-class bias, „stratified social investment“ as @SiljaHausermann & @BPalier & I call it -> rather Grüne & FDP signature

(9/n)

8) schools: more systematic funding for ca. 8000 disadvantaged schools -> sounds great, but given that we have around 32k schools in GER, that’s about 20% -> unclear how much additional support („targeted social investment“) -> could be v helpful-> rather SPD signature

(10/n)

9) parental leave becomes more generous:
- extending dual-career parental leave (+1month)
- 2 week paid-leave for partners after birth
- more paid leave after (some) miscarriages
- facilitating application
- strengthened rights for same-sex couples with children

(11/n)

Overall: many vague statements on education policy; but if they followed up, could result in substantial social investment agenda, pushing GER towards' knowledge economy. Interesting constitutional territorial politics debates will come up. Curious what&how they do in practice!

What do you think? @SGarritzmann @mariusbusemeyer @JensJungblut @cha_berstroh @ECPRKnowledge @LukasGrafEdu @katharina_hecht @APSAEdPolitics