The school in crisis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u2qggffbYM

Peter Kopa, Prague, 22.3.2023

In the best Swiss press, the Neue Zuercher Zeitung, a very interesting article appeared today, signed by Andri Rostetter, on the importance of the school. He points out that, if it collapses, it drags down the state as well, at least as we understand it today. However, Rostetter does not see it as a family problem but as an infrastructural problem. We comment below on this contribution in relation to Switzerland.

Some symptoms of a generalized crisis

In 2006, the teachers at the Rütli school in Berlin-Neukölln issued a call for help. The violence had escalated to such an extent that some teachers only dared to enter the classroom with emergency cell phones. In 2020, the Bockmühle high school in Essen made headlines because almost two-thirds of its 1,400 pupils allegedly came from families living on Hartz IV, which is social assistance given by the state to those without jobs or income. In 2021, according to a study by the Bertelsmann Foundation, 7500 pupils in Germany ended up without a high school diploma. That is 6.2%.

While Switzerland remains relatively a school paradise, the difficulties here too stem from a single root cause: the dysfunctionality of the family as a traditional institution based on Christian principles. This is a problem that cannot be solved with money, as in the case of a new Swiss school for 1,500 pupils, which cost 240 million euros. School principals have to permanently cover staff shortages, face space problems and official bureaucracy.  And parents show disinterest in the schools or consider them incapable of providing adequate support for their partly gifted children.

The vicious circle that threatens schools

The decline in the social status of schools is not a new phenomenon. The loss of image dates back to the institutional critique of the 1968 movement, which shook everything that resembled authority. The cascade of reforms initiated in the 1990s led to a general disorientation of teaching, and the attractiveness of the teaching profession continued to decline.  Thus the vicious circle of staff shortages and deteriorating educational quality has been unleashed.

Global political and social upheavals are now hitting classrooms with full force. At the same time, schools are barely prepared for the future. According to the WEF’s 2016 “The Future of Jobs” report, 65% of children entering elementary school today will later have jobs that do not yet exist.

Since the pandemic school closures, educators have regained their well-deserved reputation. Parents have seen how hard it is to teach children day in and day out. Politically, however, this rise in prestige has been virtually inconsequential.

It is the beginning of a vicious cycle. The staff is overworked, the attractiveness of the school as a birth to work diminishes. Teachers change jobs or don’t even start. Existing staff have to take on more tasks, the danger of overload increases. The fewer staff schools have at their disposal, the more difficult it becomes to maintain the quality of teaching at the required level.

Swiss authorities overwhelmed

In recent years, countless studies have shed light on the causes of teacher shortages, and the influence of reform pressure, class size, salary levels, training opportunities and other factors is well known.

The recurring call for higher salaries is also an expression of state impotence. The idea that teacher numbers can be controlled by salary policy has long been disproven. Even the consultancy firm Bass, affiliated with the SP (Socialist Party), had to conclude in a study for the canton of Graubünden in 2010 that salary increases are not an effective means of combating the teacher shortage. On the contrary, they have the potential to aggravate the problem, especially as they can be an incentive to reduce staffing levels.

Infrastructure and the school environment

While Rostetter sees school infrastructure as the key to solving the school problem, most experts in the field tell us that this game is lost or won in preschool education in the family. What is omitted, deformed or spoiled here can hardly be fixed by the school. But as a second-order factor, infrastructural improvements can help a lot in order to get out of the crisis: the school should be as attractive as possible as a birthplace. It must be a birth place where teachers like to be. It must offer students the best possible environment for their development.

There is a lot of illustrative material on this. After the turn of the millennium, Great Britain already tried to modernize education with the “Building Schools for the Future” program, combining architecture and pedagogical innovation. The Danish designer Rosan Bosch, a pioneer of modern educational architecture, advises authorities all over the world and builds schools from Abu Dhabi to Beijing. In Switzerland, it is mainly public schools that are committed to innovative and long-term thinking, such as the New City Schools in St. Gallen and Zurich or the educational group ‘Haus des Lernens’.

The attractiveness of schools as a birthplace can also be increased by radically reducing the workload of teachers. This does not only mean that tasks that are not directly related to teaching have to be cancelled. Accompanying measures are also necessary, such as compulsory language courses for foreign-language children, sanctions for dealing with uncooperative parents, and support for young teachers as they start their careers.

This does not require new curricula or Harmos concordats. The cantons can implement these measures on their own. It costs money, but it is laborious and takes time. And it will take years for the effects to become apparent. There are no alternatives. A crisis in the school sooner or later becomes a crisis in society and the state.