Dirty toilets, sticky floors, overflowing trash bins: cleanliness in many Berlin schools leaves much to be desired. A new app called “KleanBerlin,” presented on Wednesday by the education administration, is now supposed to help address the problem. With the help of the app, school caretakers document the condition of individual rooms and report defects directly to the cleaning company. The company must then fix the problem on the very same day. But will the new reporting system actually make schools cleaner?
Susanne Kühne from the initiative “Schule in Not” (“School in Distress”) doubts this. “The app is merely another instrument of control,” says Kühne, who is a member of the Pankow district assembly (BVV) for the Left Party faction. “The fundamental problem remains. Cleaning staff have poor working conditions and simply do not have enough time to clean thoroughly. The app will probably increase the pressure on cleaning staff even further.”
Trade union demands reliable working conditions
For Susanne Kühne, the solution is very clear: remunicipalisation of school cleaning services. Since the 1990s, the districts have no longer employed their own cleaning staff for schools. “Cleaning was outsourced to private service providers – and often the cheapest offer wins. The consequences are price dumping, poor working conditions, and dirty school buildings,” explains Felicia Kompio, chairwoman of the GEW Berlin, which supports the initiative. “Anyone who wants clean schools has to tackle the structure itself: we need remunicipalisation of school cleaning with reliable working and employment conditions.”
Since 2019, the initiative “Schule in Not,” together with trade unions, has been campaigning to bring school cleaning services back under state control. “Permanent cleaning staff in schools whom the children also know,” says Susanne Kühne, “that would be an important step.” More than 25,000 signatures have been collected by initiatives in recent years in support of this effort. “In six districts, the district assemblies have already approved our demands,” says Kühne. But so far nothing has happened. “The Senate and the districts are dragging out the issue,” she criticizes.
More articles from Berliner Morgenpost in English:
At the same time, the coalition agreement between the CDU and SPD clearly states that for clean schools, “sufficient cleaning staff with permanent employment contracts, bound by collective agreements, with standards of ‘good work’ and close ties to the respective schools” should be guaranteed. Ongoing pilot projects on school cleaning were supposed to continue and be evaluated. But apparently these pilot projects do not even exist. This emerges from a parliamentary inquiry by Green Party MPs Christoph Wapler and Louis Krüger from April 2025.
When asked about the status of the currently ongoing pilot projects for remunicipalisation, Torsten Kühne (CDU), State Secretary for School Construction and School Digitalisation, responded: “The Senate is currently unaware of any pilot project for the practical implementation of remunicipalisation of school cleaning. No such projects have been or are being carried out in the districts of Pankow, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, or Neukölln.”
Torsten Kühne: Clean schools are the foundation for good learning
Remunicipalisation of school cleaning was also not on the agenda at Wednesday’s presentation of the school cleaning app at the Schule an der alten Feuerwache in Niederschöneweide. The issue is not included in the current process aimed at improving school cleanliness, State Secretary Torsten Kühne said in response to a question. “I also do not see that remunicipalisation would automatically lead to improvements,” he said.
The outsourcing to external service providers in the 1990s also happened for substantive reasons, because things had not worked everywhere with in-house staff either. “For example, what happens if they are absent due to illness?” Kühne asked. Another argument against remunicipalisation is the high cost. Nevertheless, Torsten Kühne emphasized: clean schools are the foundation for good learning. And the goal is to permanently ensure the quality of school cleaning and systematically eliminate existing deficiencies. The new app is an important building block for this. “With ‘KleanBerlin,’ we are creating binding transparency regarding cleaning quality and ensuring that deficiencies are addressed consistently,” said the State Secretary. By the end of the year, all Berlin school caretakers are expected to have a tablet with the app provided to them.
This article was originally written and published on the 8th of May in German. It was translated in English with the use of Artificial Intelligence.