It’s a country with an education system in crisis. From June 15th - 19th university students and school students in numerous cities all over Germany joined in a week of diverse protest actions to create public awareness on the problems of the country’s education system. The protest action, which was called the educational strike (http://www.bildungsstreik.net/aufruf/strike-call/), had been planned and carried out in a decentralised way by local unions and supported by ESU’s German member union, fzs, as well as by several trade unions and school student unions. A number of university rectors and many professors also publicly supported the strike and its demands. Within the list of demands made by the strikers are calls for tuition-free education for all, increased accessibility of higher education institutions, a revision of the BA/MA system in Germany, autonomous and democratic student unions at all universities and more financial resources for teaching. The protests took a variety of different forms, with manifesting their discontent through organised activities at universities and others carrying out spontaneous street actions. On Wednesday, at the height of the street protests, around 270,000 students took to the streets in over 50 cities all over Germany. On Thursday several local groups staged fake bank-robberies to show the speed with which the government provided money to save the banks and at the same time continues to financially neglect the education sector.
The strikes have caught the interest of the media, both in Germany and elsewhere, sparking a national debate on education that looks set to shape the political agenda. As one specific outcome the German Minister for Higher Education has offered to hold a conference with students this summer. In the beginning of August the organisers want to meet to assess if and how their work should continue.
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