The Berlin Senate is planning to abolish the compulsory testing in schools that has been in force up to now. According to information from the Tagesspiegel, the state government will decide on Tuesday, at the suggestion of the education administration, to end the obligation to test on May 9th. In the future, tests should only be carried out on an ad hoc basis. For the time being, there should no longer be a general test that is compulsory for all students three days a week.
The Senate is thus following what the education administration had announced a week earlier for the city’s more than 2,000 daycare centers. There, too, the currently valid obligation to test will no longer apply on May 9th.
Instead, daycare children should be able to be tested on a case-by-case basis and voluntarily if an outbreak has been detected within the respective facility or the child has had contact with another infected person. A corresponding regulation should also apply to schools from next week.
The proposed decision by the state government is unlikely to meet with much approval from the state school advisory board (LEA). Last Friday, the committee officially voted to retain the obligation to test.
On Monday afternoon, the hygiene advisory board of the education administration should advise on the topic. The actual decision, on the other hand, was obviously made beforehand.
[Wenn Sie alle aktuellen Nachrichten live auf Ihr Handy haben wollen, empfehlen wir Ihnen unsere App, die Sie hier für Apple- und Android-Geräte herunterladen können.]
Criticism of the step comes from Marcel Hopp, the education policy spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group, among others. Hopp told the Tagesspiegel that after the mask requirement in the classrooms was abolished, it was “all the more important that we continue testing in order to detect infections at an early stage”. This is important for health reasons, but also to avoid learning gaps caused by quarantine cases.
Health senator Ulrike Gote (Greens) and Patrick Larscheid, medical officer for the Reinickendorf district, had signaled approval of the step in advance. Roland Kern, CEO of the umbrella organization of Berlin children’s and school shops (Daks), had explained to the Tagesspiegel that he welcomed the opportunity for “cause-related” testing in children.
In the neighboring federal state of Brandenburg, the compulsory test for schoolchildren and day-care center children ended on Monday of this week.
