It is a kind of seismograph for the state of the education system from kindergarten to university, which the educational reporting group produces every two years: the national education report “Education in Germany 2024”, which the scientists under the leadership of the Leibniz Institute for Educational Research and Information (DIPF) presented on Monday, is more than 400 pages long. A systematic inventory of the entire education system, which should serve as a guideline for politicians’ actions in the coming years.
The researchers have little to offer this year that is encouraging. Overall, the education sector looks like a permanent construction site, overstimulated and overstretched by the well-known long-term problems: a shortage of skilled workers, the ongoing influx of migrants, ongoing social inequalities and a growing decline in performance. “The education system is working at full capacity and is under great pressure to adapt,” the group of authors wrote in conclusion to their report.
Daycare centers and schools in particular are groaning under the constant influx of immigrant children who need to be integrated. The numbers have increased dramatically in all age groups between 2012 and 2022. While just over a decade ago around 28,000 children of primary school age came to Germany as refugees, by 2022 the number had risen to 146,000. The age group of three to under six year olds – particularly relevant for early education – has therefore grown significantly, with an increase of 20 percent over the past ten years. The age group of typical primary school age has also grown by 16 percent during this period. All of these children must be given a place in school and learn German.
“The integration of people with refugee and migration experience has become a permanent task and a major challenge for which there are currently no sustainable concepts,” says Kai Maaz, Managing Director of the DIPF and spokesperson for the authors’ group.
The topic of education in an immigration society runs through the entire education report, said Federal Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (FDP). “We must critically question whether the structures offered in our education system still fit the diversity of life realities in our country.” She referred to the so-called Start-Up Opportunities Program, with which the federal and state governments want to support 4,000 schools in disadvantaged areas.
The increasing heterogeneity of the student body also has a negative impact on performance, as educational studies unanimously show. The proportion of children and young people who do not reach the minimum standards in reading is high – even in international comparison, the scientists note. In 2011, the proportion of fourth-graders who failed to meet the minimum standards in reading was twelve percent. The same number of children reached the highest level of competence. In 2021, the proportion of high-performing children fell to eight percent, while at the same time 19 percent failed to meet the minimum standards.
This is a negative development that is also leading to more young people leaving school without a qualification: in 2013, the figure was 5.7 percent, and in 2022, 6.9 percent. And socially-based inequalities in educational participation also remain. Only 32 percent of children from socioeconomically disadvantaged families receive a recommendation to attend a grammar school – compared to 78 percent from better-off families.
To a large extent, this is indeed due to poorer grades. But even with the same performance and grades, 17 percent of children from disadvantaged families do not attend a high school despite being recommended to do so. Risky situations such as parents with little education, risk of poverty and unemployment are particularly common in migrant households, single parents and families with many children.
The researchers are unanimous in their opinion that appropriate support in daycare could counteract this trend. But children with a migrant background are clearly underrepresented in daycare. Of the children whose parents were both born in Germany, 100 percent now attend daycare between the ages of three and six. Of the children whose parents were both born abroad, however, only 78 percent do so. This proportion has actually fallen by seven percent compared to 2014.
Systematic language assessments followed by compulsory preschool attendance – such as the tests for four-and-a-half-year-olds in Hamburg – are not yet carried out in every federal state. “We should be aware that social educational inequalities do not only arise where they become visible in educational studies, but also and above all in early childhood,” concludes Maaz.
The authors focus on vocational training in this year’s report. According to the report, in 2022 there were more apprenticeships available than demand for the first time since 1995 – but there are ongoing major problems in matching supply and demand. There are particularly many vacancies in the sales and nutrition sectors, while numerous unplaced applicants are found in IT. A good two-thirds of young people with a maximum of an intermediate school leaving certificate who start an apprenticeship do not start in their actual desired profession and make compromises – for example with regard to income or working hours.
And young people with a low level of education in particular often do not complete any training at all. 17 percent of all young adults between the ages of 25 and 34 have no vocational qualifications. Many of them work as skilled workers in “low-prestige” jobs, as the report states – disproportionately often in the cleaning industry, in the catering industry or in warehouses and delivery services.
However, the researchers see a slight glimmer of hope for their long-term prognosis: long-term observation of previously low-skilled people born between 1940 and 1949 has shown that 46 percent have gained further qualifications over the course of their lives – some of them becoming master craftsmen or even university graduates. However, it is questionable whether these people, born during the war and post-war period, are representative of today’s generations.
The process of academization has come to a standstill for the time being. Both the number of people eligible to study and those starting university, as well as the number of students and degrees, have stagnated for some time, the researchers note. The classic “working class children” are still underrepresented. Only 25 percent of children from non-academic households go on to study, compared to 78 percent of those from academic households.
For many, studying is not their first training. One in four students has already completed training before, and at private universities, even one in two. “With a strong focus on continuing education and a highly specialized range of courses, private universities have responded very specifically to the educational needs of very specific groups of people – often groups that are traditionally underrepresented in German higher education,” the report states. These include those who are moving up the educational ladder and older people who are already working and sometimes already have families.