TUMO Berlin
Hoping for imitators
Germany still has a long way to go when it comes to digital education. As the former KfW project manager responsible for the new TUMO learning centre, Laura Knierim tells us about the contribution it can make in this area and about KfW’s long-term plans for the project.
The coronavirus crisis in 2020/21 has functioned as a kind of magnifying glass that has brutally exposed the problems of our education system in the digital age. The digital equipment in schools and the digital literacy of many teachers and pupils appears to be out of date. Verena Pausder, an expert in digital education, says: “We got bad marks and now we have to stay for detention.” We automatically look to what's happening abroad – to Denmark, for example, where over 90% of all pupils use digital media in class every day, or to Estonia, where the transition to distance learning during the coronavirus crisis was quite smooth. We also take note of Armenia, where TUMO, an extracurricular learning centre for digital and creative subjects, has been inspiring young people between 12 and 18 since 2011.
Germany’s largest promotional bank, KfW, ventured a look at Armenia as early as 2019 and was impressed. It found a state-of-the-art training centre where thousands of young people come every week to learn skills relevant to the labour market of the future – and have lots of fun at the same time. This is something that has never been seen before on this scale in Germany. The concept of getting young people with very different interests and family backgrounds excited about a shared extracurricular place of learning through the diversity of subjects is also convincing. TUMO attaches great importance to being a centre for creative technologies. The subjects offered range from 3D animation, film, music and drawing to robotics and programming. An effect of this diversity is that girls, for example, often start with less tech-oriented subjects and then discover coding. Thus, young people who originally came to the centre because of the film and music courses on offer end up designing robots, among other things. This is broadening horizons in the truest sense of the word.
Until now, KfW education financing for private individuals has essentially consisted of three promotional programmes: Upgrade Federal Education and Training Assistance, the Education Loan and the KfW Student Loan. All three cases involve promotional loans that are implemented on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and as KfW’s own programmes. With the Federal Upgrading Training Assistance, for example, we have been promoting basic and advanced vocational training and education on behalf of the German Federal Government for around 25 years. With the KfW Student Loan we finance the cost of living for students at officially accredited universities in Germany. Since the KfW Student Loan was launched in 2006, we have supported more than 350,000 students through their studies with this promotional programme. Most of them even say that they would not have been able to study at all without the KfW Student Loan.
An innovative promotional approach
The TUMObile mobile desk resembles a bumper car and is easy to move around the room.
This portfolio is now being expanded by a promotional approach that is innovative for KfW. With the TUMO flagship centre in Berlin, we plan to pave the way for many other extracurricular learning centres in Germany that combine creative and digital subjects. We want to show that training and education centres of this kind can be set up quickly – in about one year. This is why KfW signed a franchise agreement with TUMO at the beginning of this year, enabling us to open the first TUMO centre in Berlin.
It is a win-win scenario. Germany is benefiting from the approach developed in Armenia, which uses the franchise fees for other TUMO education and training projects This project is also innovative for KfW. While KfW Development Bank usually implements approaches and ideas in developing and emerging countries that originated in Germany, Germany is now being introduced to a concept developed in Armenia.
The centre is currently being built in Wilmersdorfer Strasse, the oldest pedestrian zone in Berlin, in the Charlottenburg district. Modern facilities for independent learning, workshop rooms, a music studio and space for events are being created on over 2,000 square metres. In normal operation, a minimum of 1,000 young people a week can use the centre to pursue further training and education in ten different subjects and to be creative together with friends. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, lessons are taking place online at the moment. This allows young people to take part in self-study phases and workshops from the comfort of their own homes if necessary. As soon as infection rates will permit it, it will be possible to switch to lessons on site.
The TUMO centre in Berlin aims to encourage imitators. Thus we are glad that we have already received numerous requests for further TUMO centres. Children and young people everywhere in Germany should have the opportunity to acquire the skills urgently needed for the future, no matter what their socio-economic background is! However, extracurricular learning centres can only be one small component in overall efforts to bring the German educational landscape into the digital age. As a promotional bank of the German Federal Government and federal states, we want to help shape this important process in Germany.
Addendum
On 13 December 2022, KfW signed a partnership agreement with TUMO Armenia and the project executing agency Starkmacher e.V. to open a TUMO centre in Mannheim. This will establish the second TUMO learning centre for digital skills in Germany. KfW is advising and supporting the project executing agency on site with the concept.
At the TUMO Centre Mannheim, which is being built in the MAFINEX technology centre in Lindenhof, over 1,000 children and young people a week can develop their skills in ten digital subject areas after school. The offer is voluntary and free of charge. Thanks to an individual learning path, they acquire basic skills that can be deepened and consolidated in workshops and their own learning laboratories.
The TUMO centre in Mannheim is the start of a nationwide expansion of further learning centres in urban and also rural regions.
Published on KfW Stories: 14 December 2020, updated on 19 August 2024.
The described project contributes to the following United Nationsʼ Sustainable Development Goals
Goal 4: Quality education
Refusing people access to education means depriving them of a basic human right – and of important development prospects for individuals and society. Education enables people to improve their political, social, cultural, and economic situations. Worldwide, 58 million children and 63 million young people still do not have access to primary and secondary schools. 90 per cent of all children with a disability never go to school. 781 million people are illiterate. 7.5 million people with functional illiteracy live in Germany alone.
All United Nations member states adopted the 2030 Agenda in 2015. At its heart is a list of 17 goals for sustainable development, known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Our world should become a place where people are able to live in peace with each other in ways that are ecologically compatible, socially just, and economically effective.
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