FROM MAY 1, proud doctorate holders will no longer be allowed to write the title Dr in front of their name on German passports. For a country obsessed with qualifications – Prof Drs are quite common and even Dr Drs are not that rare – this drop in status can be difficult. But it’s not as bad as the decline in German education levels.
The most recent results from three very different testing regimes, comparing students of varying ages, point in only one direction: down. The best known, the International Student Assessment Program (PISA) tests the performance in mathematics, reading and science of 15-year-olds in some 80 countries every three years. Its most recent results, from December, confirm sharp falls in all three subjects over the last decade in Germany (see graph).
A separate study that measures the reading skills of 4th graders in 65 countries, known by the acronym IGLfound that 25.4% of the German cohort lacked adequate skills in 2021, compared to 18.9% five years earlier and just 17% in 2001. Meanwhile, the latest survey of German language skills among 9th graders year led by IQBan educational research institute that compares results between German states, found that the national proportion of those who fail to achieve minimum standards in reading, listening and spelling has increased respectively by nine, 16 and nine percentage points since 2015.
Failure is far from catastrophic. Germany’s top-performing universities are still among the best in the world, as are the vocational training opportunities. Even in decline, its schools are average by European standards; but this nevertheless means that they are doing worse than Austria, Poland, the Czechs and Switzerland, Germany’s neighbors and peers. The alarm is also not new. When their schools first underwent comparative testing in 2000, the disappointing results surprised Germans so much that “PISA–Shock» triggered a wave of reforms.
What is new is that Germany is performing poorly and declining, even though it has attempted various reforms since the start of the mandate. Shockand although he devotes a similar proportion of his GDP on education, just like the most successful neighbors. Nor can the poor results simply be attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic or immigration, although the system’s failure to respond well to the influx of a million refugees in 2015-2016 does. certainly gone.
The causes are deeper. “[Germany] fails to adapt to 21st century learning needs, such as in Asia and the Nordic countries,” says Andreas Schleicher, director of education at OECDwho manages the PISA tests, in Paris. Axel Plünnecke, head of education research at the German Economic Institute in Cologne, agrees. The education system has lagged behind changes in the social structure, he says, the fact that almost a quarter of students now no longer speak German at home is just one example.
System rigidities begin with cultural attitudes that are often not helpful. In the country that invented preschool, many parents avoid preschool, believing it encourages competition. German children start school at age six, but early schooling is often lax and playful, because children “shouldn’t be too stressed.” Fourth graders, for example, spend nearly 30% less time reading in class than fourth graders. OECD average. Teachers, who in Germany are traditionally the undisputed masters of their classes, often resist new evidence-based methods or standardized tests that could “stigmatize” low-performing students. Many see education not as a means of developing basic skills, but as a mission to create cultured citizens. In most German states, primary school lasts only four years, after which students are divided into those destined for university study or technical/vocational careers.
All of these traits mean that children from less educated, poorer or non-German-speaking families arrive at this stage at a significant disadvantage. They are much less likely to be chosen for the academic secondary education that leads to better-paying careers. Among children with at least one parent with an advanced degree, 79% will go to college; among those with only professional qualifications, only 27%; among those who speak a foreign language at home, 23% and among those whose parents have no professional qualifications, only 12%.
Such things are indeed slow to change. On the day Nele McElvany’s son was born 19 years ago in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district, another mother also gave birth in the same building. Mrs. McElvany, now Professor McElvany, was dismayed at the time to think that even though her own child would almost certainly finish school with a Baccalaureatethe university entrance certificate, his neighbor’s would not obtain it, simply because of their contrasting origins.
“At ten years old, they decide ALL RIGHT, we make you a knowledge worker, not you,” says Schleicher. “It was fine for the industrial age, but today it’s just a waste of a lot of human talent.” The problem is compounded, he says, by the fact that almost everyone in positions of power comes from a university background. They simply cannot see the flaws in a system from which they themselves have benefited.
Despite this, aspiring reformers have repeatedly attempted to upend a system unique to a group of German-speaking countries. One result is that across Germany, high school students relegated to non-academic streams can now more easily cross the border, or simply study to pass the Baccalaureate. Since education is under state rather than federal control, German states have also tinkered by introducing longer school days, extending primary school (as in Berlin), or changing the duration secondary education (as in the southern state of Baden-Württemberg). .
But as Ms. McElvany, an education expert and vice president for research at YOU According to the University of Dortmund, too many such efforts have stalled or gone into reverse. The obstacles are numerous. Education is a hot topic, involving stakeholders ranging from anxious parents to powerful teachers unions. Election cycles are short. Politicians have much to lose by interfering in education, Ms. McElvany notes, and little to gain in often costly and long-term projects.
This is a shame, because ideally the 16 German states should experiment and learn from each other, like for example in America. Schools in Hamburg, for example, were once among the bottom in the state rankings. In 2010, an attempted radical reform that would have added a year to primary education, in part to respond to rising immigrant numbers, was canceled by insurgent conservative parents. But some changes have been made, including the introduction of language tests for preschoolers, with those who perform poorly sent to a compulsory year of German lessons. Result: the city-state’s schools are now among the best performing in the country.
The fact that no other state has adopted similar reforms speaks to systemic inertia. This often extends down to the district level and individual schools. A 2017 survey, for example, found that while schools in the Netherlands exercised direct control over 92% of decision-making, including teacher recruitment, the level of independence in Germany was just 17%. . “When I had to replace a few simple parts broken by a child in a science laboratory, I discovered that our school didn’t even have a bank account,” says a teacher at a high school in Berlin. “Every spending decision must go through the district council. »
When asked how she would ideally approach school reform, Ms. McElvany ticks off a dozen measures without hesitation. Fortunately for Germany, none of these measures seem very strict, from following Hamburg’s lead on language preschool education to emphasizing basic skills such as reading , or to relax budgetary constraints to allow underperforming schools to solve their own problems. Unfortunately for Germany, the political will to take such a step is lacking.■