Digital wounds in Saxony’s schools: Court of Auditors sounds the alarm!

Digital wounds in Saxony’s schools: Court of Auditors sounds the alarm!

Digitalization in Saxony’s schools remains a hot topic! In its current annual report, the Saxon Court of Auditors (SRH) denounced the alarming grievances in the state's educational institutions. The focus is particularly on the immense burden of personnel costs. In 2022, Saxony spent a whopping 8.2 billion euros on 94,139 employees, which accounts for almost 39 percent of total spending. “This is a worrying level,” explained Court of Audit President Jens Michel, making it clear that a thorough review of personnel policy is absolutely necessary. At the same time, auditor Isolde Haag is pushing for a monitoring and control system for the schools' IT equipment, which currently has varying levels of performance Day24 reported.

A particularly serious problem: In around half of the 501 schools in Saxony, the IT systems are not always ready for use, which endangers equal opportunities for students. The effort required to maintain these systems, largely organized by teachers themselves, takes away immense hours of teaching every year - 6,246 hours that never take place, to be exact. The government has painfully recognized that assessing staffing needs in this critical situation must become a priority. In addition, the dependence on external consultants is increasingly becoming a burden: in 2022, this practice cost 6.7 million euros, two million more than in the previous year MDR additionally noted.

Although a third of the classrooms are now equipped with digital display and interaction systems, the general backwardness of digitalization remains a point of criticism. For example, the government is planning to reduce the number of ministries from eleven to ten in order to reduce bureaucracy and save staff - but whether these measures will be enough to solve the increasingly acute problems of Saxon educational institutions remains to be seen. The ghosts of the lack of digital equipment and inefficient personnel policies are far from defeated!