In most German federal states, the education systems have not improved since 2013 and have deteriorated in almost half. This is the finding of the current education monitor of the New Social Market Economy Initiative (INSM), which was presented on Wednesday in Berlin.
“Especially school children who have no parental support are still massively disadvantaged,” said INSM Managing Director Hubertus Pellengahr. Almost everywhere there is a lack of sufficient all-day care. Pellengahr also criticized the massive shortage of teachers.
On average, prospective fifth-graders can read and listen as well as children in Bremen, the least educated state, were able to do ten years ago. Berlin, on the other hand, has been at the bottom for many years and has improved to 11th place (2021: 13th place), continuing the trend of the two previous years.
In the area of ​​digitization, which was examined for the first time, the capital can score with comparatively fast school WiFi and is in 6th place in this ranking.
The market-liberal lobby organization INSM, which is financed by employers’ associations and is a subsidiary of the German Economic Institute, has been comparing the education systems of the various countries from a growth-oriented perspective for 19 years. The ranking is collected in a good dozen categories, each with several sub-points, and finally an average point is determined for the overall rating.
For example, the areas of school quality, educational poverty, university and MINT as well as integration and research orientation are checked
However, no separate school performance tests are usually carried out for the education monitor, but studies available from other sources are offset against each other. Many fields are evaluated on the basis of the school country comparisons of the Berlin Institute for Quality Development in Education (IQB). Therefore, most of the data comes from the years 2020 and 2021, in some areas also from 2018.
As in previous years, Saxony and Bavaria are in first and second place in the state table with 65.9 and 63.9 points. Berlin has improved by 5.6 points with its 11th place and is in the middle with 45.8 points. Brandenburg and North Rhine-Westphalia share 13th place, ahead of Saxony-Anhalt and Bremen. In the new field of digitization, however, the Hanseatic city is the leader of the table.
The fact that some countries do so poorly in the overall ranking, although they have good values ​​in some of the 13 areas, is mainly due to the massive discrepancies in the area of ​​school quality, explained study leader Axel Plünnecke when asked by the Tagesspiegel.
Where the differences are rather marginal in many areas, all comparative work revealed a stark difference in school quality between the best and the worst countries.
For example, the childcare ratio at daycare centers and schools in Berlin is comparatively good, and there are also a relatively large number of all-day offers. In the university sector, Berlin has many researchers and foreign students. In contrast, the proportion of young people without care and the school dropout rate are high despite progress. Many young people do not reach the minimum standards of skills, which are lower than in many other federal states, especially in the MINT subjects.
Poor school quality, unequally distributed educational opportunities and a decline in STEM skills are nationwide problems that have worsened in the wake of the corona pandemic, says Plünnecke. The digital infrastructure in schools must be further expanded and the MINT area massively strengthened.
For example, IT needs to be a nationwide school subject. In the day-care centers, even more emphasis must be placed on early language support – and the all-day program as a whole needs to be expanded. Pellengahr called for a comprehensive education initiative and more surveys on the level of learning: “We need nationwide targets and real data-supported competition for the best education system.”
