The Ministry of Education in North Rhine-Westphalia has offered Muslim pupils a special arrangement for the Abitur exams on Friday. Because the Islamic Eid begins on this day, they are allowed to rewrite their exams on May 9, the authority announced.
Islamic associations had protested against the Friday date. Actually, the exams were scheduled for last Wednesday, but due to technical problems, the date was moved back. “The postponement of the Abitur exams in North Rhine-Westphalia precisely on the Ramadan festival is annoying and irritating,” said the spokesman for the Coordination Council of Muslims in Cologne, Murat Gümüş. He said that the amendment denies Muslim students the opportunity to celebrate the end of the fasting month of Ramadan in the mosque and with their families. “It would also be hard to imagine Abitur exams taking place on Christmas or Easter.” According to Gümüş, all federal states should pay more attention to religious diversity.
The AfD member of the state parliament Carlo Clemens strictly rejects a separate make-up date for the final exams in North Rhine-Westphalia exclusively for Muslim pupils. “Friday is a normal working and school day in Germany. Therefore, there is nothing to be said against a school-leaving examination on this day. It would be unfair to other pupils if Muslim pupils were granted special rights,” he told the newspaper JUNGE FREIHEIT. All religious communities could claim special rights in the future, he said, if School Minister Dorothee Feller (CDU) set a “precedent” for this year’s Abitur examination.
“School Minister Feller must immediately and transparently clarify how this mishap could have occurred. It must be ensured that such a disastrous mishap cannot happen again.” The teaching profession is made even less attractive by such mishaps and teacher shortages, Clemens warned.
The reason for the data breach was probably the newly introduced 2-factor authentication. 600 out of 900 schools in North Rhine-Westphalia were unable to download exam papers from a central server on Tuesday. The school policy spokesperson of the SPD parliamentary group in the North Rhine-Westphalia state parliament, Dilek Engin, called the subsequent communication behaviour of the school minister “catastrophic”. Feller had simply disappeared for hours. Teachers, school-leavers and Muslim pupils now have to pay the price.
The Christian Democrat has since apologised for the mishap. “I can understand that many students and many teachers are angry – I am too. I know exactly what that means for high school graduates.”
https://jungefreiheit.de/politik/deutschland/2023/extra-wurst-beim-abi/