Saxony wants to carefully develop its education policy

Evolution instead of revolution: this is the slogan under which Saxony intends to further develop its school system in future. A key success factor of Saxony's education policy is the good balance between innovation, systematic and continuous quality development and stability, said Minister of Education Christian Piwarz (CDU) in the state parliament on Thursday. Old structural debates would be avoided. Particularly in states with frequent structural interventions in the school system, negative performance trends can be observed.

In the plenary session, Piwarz provided an anticipation of the "Bildungsland Sachsen 2030" strategy, which is due to be published in May. The minister named a few points of reference: "The performance orientation in Saxony's school system remains. And there will be no changes." Curricula will be updated and examination formats further developed. The schools would be given more freedom in the design of the timetable and in subject-linking learning.

The Ministry of Education also wants to retain the top marks. The recommendation of the expert councils to abandon head marks has been contradicted in many regional education forums - in view of the growing importance of assessments of work and social behavior. "We will also take this into account accordingly." According to Piwarz, participation has made a significant contribution to the success of the strategy process and is unique in Germany.

The Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs took a lot of time to develop the strategy and involved external expertise. 80 experts from various fields formulated 218 recommendations for action. They were discussed for months at five regional conferences.

The measures are to be implemented from the summer of this year and then become visible in the 2025/2026 school year. Piwarz promised that the implementation would also proceed "systematically, intelligently and swiftly". This will successfully develop school education in Saxony.

According to SPD education politician Sabine Friedel, the Ministry of Education must create the freedom that school staff need to implement the measures. The state parliament must ensure good framework conditions and provide sufficient staff and good equipment. "We need school social work and school assistance at every school. We need enough teachers and enough jobs to retain all graduates. We need more funding for school building construction in order to finally clear the renovation backlog."