Schools in Germany have now been closed for several weeks. Despite support from the internet, virtual classrooms, teachers and parents, a lot of material has undoubtedly been missed. Now, Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble is calling for the school holidays to be shortened to allow pupils to catch up.

Schäuble: Shorten summer holidays to allow students to catch up

In an interview with the newspaper Augsburger Allgemeine, the CDU politician laid the possibility of shortening the summer vacation on the table. “With a few exceptions, schools will remain closed for some time. Therefore, I wonder whether those responsible in the states are thinking about shortening the school holidays in the summer,” he said. 

Doing so would, Schäuble argued, provide schoolchildren with an opportunity to catch up on the teaching material they have missed during the coronavirus pandemic. It also solves a further problem for parents - what to do with their children over the summer holidays.

“At the moment it is unclear for many reasons when and how you can travel in summer,” said Schäuble. “Many parents have probably already used up their holiday leave [to look after their children] during the crisis.” Therefore, he expects that some are wondering “how they should organise six weeks of summer vacation.” 

Majority of the German population in favour?

Figures suggest that the majority of the population might be behind him. The latest ARD DeutschlandTrend survey shows that a third of all Germans have already postponed or cancelled their summer vacation due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. 28 percent still want to stick to their travel plans. 

Moreover, a representative survey by the Augsburger Allgemeine found that a majority of respondents (55,1 percent) were in favour of shortening the summer holidays. 35,7 percent were undecided and just 9,2 percent against it. 

For the President of the German Teachers’ Association, Heinz-Peter Meidinger, however, shortening the summer holidays is not currently up for debate. “I think that at the present time a discussion about shortening summer holidays is actually going about it wrong,” he told Deutschlandfunk. “I also think that it won’t even have a big effect.”