Dirty toilets, sticky floors, overflowing trash bins: cleanliness in many Berlin schools leaves much to be desired. A new app called \u201cKleanBerlin,\u201d 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?<\/p>\n
Susanne K\u00fchne from the initiative \u201cSchule in Not\u201d (\u201cSchool in Distress\u201d) doubts this. \u201cThe app is merely another instrument of control,\u201d says K\u00fchne, who is a member of the Pankow district assembly (BVV) for the Left Party faction. \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trade union demands reliable working conditions<\/p>\n
For Susanne K\u00fchne, 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. \u201cCleaning was outsourced to private service providers \u2013 and often the cheapest offer wins. The consequences are price dumping, poor working conditions, and dirty school buildings,\u201d explains Felicia Kompio, chairwoman of the GEW Berlin, which supports the initiative. \u201cAnyone who wants clean schools has to tackle the structure itself: we need remunicipalisation of school cleaning with reliable working and employment conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since 2019, the initiative \u201cSchule in Not,\u201d together with trade unions, has been campaigning to bring school cleaning services back under state control. \u201cPermanent cleaning staff in schools whom the children also know,\u201d says Susanne K\u00fchne, \u201cthat would be an important step.\u201d More than 25,000 signatures have been collected by initiatives in recent years in support of this effort. \u201cIn six districts, the district assemblies have already approved our demands,\u201d says K\u00fchne. But so far nothing has happened. \u201cThe Senate and the districts are dragging out the issue,\u201d she criticizes.<\/p>\n
More articles from Berliner Morgenpost in English:<\/p>\n
At the same time, the coalition agreement between the CDU and SPD clearly states that for clean schools, \u201csufficient cleaning staff with permanent employment contracts, bound by collective agreements, with standards of \u2018good work\u2019 and close ties to the respective schools\u201d 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 Kr\u00fcger from April 2025.<\/p>\n
When asked about the status of the currently ongoing pilot projects for remunicipalisation, Torsten K\u00fchne (CDU), State Secretary for School Construction and School Digitalisation, responded: \u201cThe 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-Sch\u00f6neberg, or Neuk\u00f6lln.\u201d<\/p>\n
Torsten K\u00fchne: Clean schools are the foundation for good learning<\/p>\n
Remunicipalisation of school cleaning was also not on the agenda at Wednesday\u2019s presentation of the school cleaning app at the Schule an der alten Feuerwache in Niedersch\u00f6neweide. The issue is not included in the current process aimed at improving school cleanliness, State Secretary Torsten K\u00fchne said in response to a question. \u201cI also do not see that remunicipalisation would automatically lead to improvements,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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. \u201cFor example, what happens if they are absent due to illness?\u201d K\u00fchne asked. Another argument against remunicipalisation is the high cost. Nevertheless, Torsten K\u00fchne 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. \u201cWith \u2018KleanBerlin,\u2019 we are creating binding transparency regarding cleaning quality and ensuring that deficiencies are addressed consistently,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
This article was originally written and published on the 8th of May in German.<\/a>\u00a0It was translated in English<\/a> with the use of Artificial Intelligence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dirty toilets, sticky floors, overflowing trash bins: cleanliness in many Berlin schools leaves much to be desired. A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13935,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[18],"class_list":{"0":"post-13934","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-berlin","8":"tag-berlin"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}