Liability and responsibility in Education: Germany

Abstract

In German educational policy, a central problem is what legal responsibilities, duties and principles of liability exist. In the school environment, numerous different societal groups work together: teachers, students, parents and administrative staff. Tensions between teachers and students, difficulties among the students themselves and differences between teachers on the one hand and parents on the other contain a great potential for conflict within society. Any forum in which various people encounter one another is one in which legal quarrels are in-built. Moreover, teachers have, in Germany’s schools, an exposed and public position. They are responsible both for proper educational standards and for the bodily integrity of the pupils entrusted to their care.1 They are to provide children and adolescents with the information they need in our information society and must also ensure that all parties happily co-exist at their school. This is admittedly a great burden, and teachers are not always able to bear it. If they cannot, legal liability and responsibility will ensue. There is also the possibility of legal responsibility on the part of the school leadership and administration, which set down the general framework of instruction and thus carry a considerable degree of societal, but also legal responsibility. One must also come to terms with questions relating to the liability and responsibility of the pupils. Of no small importance are in addition constitutional and administrative-law issues dealing with important topics such as the suspension of the pupil from attendance or the marking of students’ work. The relationship between pupils and a school is the subject of special legal rules, on which numerous rights and duties are founded – rights and duties which apply to teachers as well as to students. I shall therefore touch on all three of the great divisions into which German law is traditionally divided: criminal law, civil law and public law. Owing to the width of the topics dealt with here, it is not possible to give more than an overview, which must be cursory and confined to state schools. The basic legal framework of German criminal, civil and public law can only be sketched in order to provide the basis for discussing the legal principles peculiarly applicable in education. The main emphasis is, as I mentioned at the start, the legal responsibility of all those who are directly or indirectly concerned with education. ∗ Paper delivered at the 2000 Conference of the European Association for Education Law and Policy Paris, 14 to 17 December 2000. B. Responsibility of each party