ifo Education Researcher Wößmann Favors Priority for Schooling
ifo education researcher Ludger Wößmann has called for schooling to take precedence and for a reordering of priorities in the fight against Covid-19. “Nursing homes and homes for the elderly have no effective protection, and decisive rules are lacking for open-plan offices and other workplaces, and for travel. What’s more, the existing contact rules are being enforced only half-heartedly in many places,” he writes in an article for Wirtschaftswoche magazine. “Other European countries have their priorities the other way around: schools are open, while public life outside schools faces far greater restrictions.” If more rigorous limits were in place on contacts between adults, the burden on the younger generation would be lighter.
According to Wößmann, the harm caused by school closures is enormous. Individual students who miss out on one-third of a school year can expect to earn around 3 percent less on average from gainful employment over their entire working life. He adds that the German economy as a whole faces lost long-term growth, with economic output down by 1.5 percent on average until the end of the century – equivalent to around EUR 2.5 trillion.
School openings could be staggered by age, Wößmann writes. Grades 1 through 6 should return to the classroom as soon as possible, observing all known protective measures and with staggering of class starts and breaks. Moreover, many schools have already successfully piloted arrangements in which half of the young people attend classes in person and the other half via online video link from home, alternating on a daily basis. Third, educators could teach the material in online video classes even when schools are closed. Many schools are now prepared for digital distance learning, he writes, and the others must now follow suit. This would require policymakers to immediately set out clear instructions specifying that all schools provide daily video instuction in all subjects for all students “If there’s one lesson we ought to learn from the spring, it is this: handing out worksheets is not teaching,” Wößmann writes.
