Education and Social Affairs | Berlin's austerity policy: cuts for the wide gap

Black children, Sinti and Roma families, girls wearing headscarves, boys named Mohamad, queer youth, Jewish children and young people: Derviş Hızarcı, chairman of the Kreuzberg Initiative Against Anti-Semitism (Kiga), is clear about who will be affected by the cuts in Berlin's Senate Education Administration. Like other institutions that are committed to the educational participation of marginalized groups, the project is on the Senate's cut list.

"Where civil society is destroyed, democracy is also destroyed," Hızarcı warned on Wednesday at the Berlin office of the education union GEW. He accused the Senate of pushing marginalized groups further to the margins with its austerity policy - and doing so quite deliberately. "Sometimes you get the impression that they want hot spots to burn. They don't want Muslims and migrant communities to get involved in fighting anti-Semitism because they can point the finger at it." People who need help are increasingly seen as a burden.

From April 1st, the kindergarten will lose all of its funding from the education administration, amounting to more than 182,000 euros. The same fate has befallen other projects such as the Intersectional Pedagogy Competence Center i-Päd (250,000 euros), which campaigns against discrimination in the education system. The Berlin Senate wants to save 39 million euros - in addition to the 370 million euros already cut from the budget in December.

"Our work is being reduced to zero," says Olenka Bordo Benavides from Queerformat. The department for queer education is also being massively affected by cuts. Bordo Benavides says she is not surprised. The austerity measures are an expression of a worrying development that has become significantly more severe since the black-red government took office. The fact that the politically heated atmosphere is ensuring that the need for placement services for marginalized groups continues to grow is simply of no interest to the Senate.

"Sometimes you get the impression that you want hot spots to burn."

Derviş Hızarcı Kreuzberg Initiative against Antisemitism (Kiga)

Last but not least, the cuts will have a noticeable impact on everyday life at schools with a high proportion of migrants. "For language reasons alone, many parents cannot support their children at home as much as they would like," says Katharina Cam, a teacher at the Otto Wels School in Lichtenberg. "As a school, we have to make up for a lot." Many children have special needs, struggle with learning difficulties, and require additional care on a social and emotional level.

The cuts would mean the loss of the very social work professionals who can specifically address these needs. "We were recently praised by the school inspectorate for precisely these areas," explains Cam. "Now we are being deprived of exactly what actually makes this high-quality work possible."

The Berlin regional head of the education union GEW will not accept this and issued a declaration of war on Wednesday. "The Senate is pursuing a policy of social inequality," criticizes Gökhan Akgün. While high schools are profiting, disadvantaged children at primary schools and special schools are being systematically left behind. "We demand: no cuts in inclusion and support." The GEW will continue to promote protests like last weekend. The Berlin Migration Council announced that it would investigate a legal violation of the budget law.

Attempts at mediation have recently come from the ranks of the SPD. Members of the Social Democrats' parliamentary group announced that they would continue to support certain projects by redistributing funds, albeit with less money than before. However, neither the initiatives nor the GEW are satisfied with this. "The money is there," says Akgün. By conducting more intensive tax audits of large companies, the Senate can easily ensure full coffers. For the calendar year 2023 alone, such an audit of just 16.3 percent of Berlin companies brought in 229 million euros. Akgün addresses the Governing Mayor Kai Wegner (CDU): "Why is this redistribution from bottom to top not being pursued?"