National Education Platform to Meet Digital Learning Challenge

National Education Platform planned for 2025

The global Covid-19 pandemic has acted as a catalyst for digitalization in Germany’s education system. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) has earmarked EUR 630 million for the creation of a National Education Platform (NEP) by 2025 as part of a “Digital Education Initiative.” The proposed digital space will link existing and new digital education platforms to create a national platform that is available to the breadth of the population. An interim version of the NEP is to be put in place by the second half of 2023, with a first round of funding worth EUR 150 million currently being made available to companies, universities and project consortia developing proposal solutions for the centralized platform. 

“Digital education for all” call from Bitkom

Germany's education system must become more agile and flexible according to digital association Bitkom. Germany’s next government must ensure that all members of the population have continued low-threshold access to suitable educational opportunities that can be flexibly integrated into daily life. According to Bitkom there still remains insufficient access to digital education content, platforms and advisory and training services in Germany’s classrooms. The coronavirus crisis has shown that significant measures need to be taken to meet the country’s numerous digital learning challenges.

Federal government already investing EUR 6.5 billion

As part of the “Digital Pact for Schools,” the federal government is already providing total funding of EUR 6.5 billion to the federal states – including EUR 500 million for laptop computers to be loaned to pupils and another EUR 500 million for digital devices for teaching staff. A further 500 million euros has been set aside to train and finance IT administrators.

Germans want digitalization prioritized in coalition talks

According to a recent Civey survey commissioned by eco, the association of the internet industry, almost two thirds of the German population want digitalization to be prioritized in the government coalition negotiations. Uppermost in the minds of ordinary Germans is the streamlining of the country’s local government administrations, followed by the expansion of infrastructure and the digitalization of education. The possible “traffic light” coalition of the SPD, FDP and Alliance 90/The Greens has set itself the goal of a “digital awakening” in its exploratory negotiation paper.