The truth behind Germany's education 'disaster'

The latest PISA study has reveals a dramatic slump in attainment standards among German school pupils. What explains the collapse?

Photo by Taylor Flowe on Unsplash

A friend of mine works as a primary school teacher in a Berlin district synonymous countrywide with failed integration policies.

The school he works at has a bit of a reputation.

Before the current school year commenced, he received an enrollment list. Half of the two dozen children were German. However, by the time the school year started, just two of the German names were left.

Their parents had successfully sued the education board into giving them a place at a “better” school. Realising what had happened, the mother of one of the two remaining German kids contacted him before the semester and asked tearfully whether her child's future was ruined. The penny even dropped for the parents of a Spanish child, who also disappeared from the list.

By the end, the names that were left were almost all from the Balkans and the Middle East.

This is unlikely to be an isolated anecdote.

Ever more lawyers are specializing in suing education boards on behalf of such parents. One lawyer boasts that he charges upwards of €3,000 - but that doesn’t put off pushy parents, who start contacting him in November just in case they need legal backup the following summer.

The result is a de facto segregation in the German school system. Middle-class parents, who enjoy the shabby chic qualities of a district like Neukölln, lose their “anything goes” outlook on life when it comes to their kids.

Nervous that their children’s classmates in “problem schools” can barely speak German, middle class parents know how to bend the system to ensure their children are surrounded by Emils rather than Amirs.

The consequence: children who speak another language at home have precious little contact with native speakers even in the schoolyard.

Thus, it wasn’t surprising to read in the latest OECD international comparison of school achievement that there is a yawning gap in Germany between the scores of native versus immigrant children.

Measured around a base average of 500 points in the OECD’s PISA test scheme, immigrant school pupils in Germany scored 59 points worse than German children in Maths and 67 points worse in reading. Overall, Germany’s school children scored their worst-ever test results as standards plummeted.

It is tempting to give yuppie parents all the blame and wag a finger at them for taking the selfish option.

But the problems actually start much earlier. Studies suggest that 16% of children entering the first grade in Germany can’t speak the language yet. Primary school teachers, therefore, have little choice but to spend time making sure the whole class understands what individual words mean before they can move on to the meaning of an actual sentence.

Many people, therefore, give the German state the blame for the “PISA disaster.”

Writing in Der Spiegel, left-wing politician Sawsan Chebli argues that the state needs to send language teachers into kindergarten to support foreign-born children before they start school.

Herself the daughter of illiterate immigrants, Chebli demands “massive investment in successful early childhood education”.

Conservatives, meanwhile, point out that the overall slip in standards corresponds to migrants making up quarter of all school pupils (up from one in eight a decade ago). “Migration figures are rising, education levels are falling: That won’t work in the long term,” proffers commentator Nikolaus Blume, also in Der Spiegel.

Lefties blame the state, conservatives blame migration: quelle surprise.

But, a little look at the PISA data shows why both of these arguments are flawed.

When it comes to migrant kids performing badly, Germany is in good company. The PISA report has exposed drastic attainment gaps between native and migrant children across the entire EU, which has experienced huge flows of immigration in recent years.

In Sweden, immigrant children perform worse in maths by 63 points and by 81 in comprehension; in Austria, the difference is 58 points and 65 points; in France, 51 points and 52 points. These countries have some of the highest per-capita education spending in the world. Lots of money alone doesn’t resolve the problem.

But, to claim that ‘high immigration = poor attainment’ is also simply wrong.

Throughout the English-speaking world, immigrant children scored as well as, or better than, native children. Canada, in particular, saw immigrants outperforming their native peers significantly.

Meanwhile, overall PISA winner Singapore wiped the floor with the European competition despite having high numbers of migrant children in its schools.

What is the critical difference then?

To me, the answer seems obvious although, admittedly, it is not one that the OECD mentions in its conclusions.

The educational results of children are highly dependent on the achievement of their parents. Thus: selective immigration policies = good PISA results.

Take Singapore. It has one of the pickiest migration policies in the world: two-thirds of visas are handed to people armed with a university degree. And in PISA they performed similarly to the native children.

The same goes for the US, New Zealand, and Canada: half of migrants already have degrees when they arrive.

Newcomers to the EU by contrast often lack even basic schooling. In Germany, less than 20 percent have a university degree. The numbers are only a little better in the Netherlands, Austria, or Sweden.

It seems that the glaring omission in the analysis of how to fix Germany’s “PISA disaster” is the question of how to fix our migration policies.

To my mind, the PISA results expose just how complacent Europe’s laissez-faire approach to migration has been. We dither over whether we want migration at all while essentially allowing anyone who crosses the Mediterranean to stay. All the while. other developed countries are recruiting top talents who are going to ensure their prosperity for decades to come.

In the long run, given the ever-widening gaps in the labour market, these are policies that are going to expose Germany badly.

Sure, English-speaking countries have a head start given that theirs is the lingua franca. That makes it easier for immigrants to hit the ground running. But that is all the more reason for Germany to take the initiative.

One idea would be to invest more in a network of German-speaking schools across the globe to create a recruitment pipeline of young talents versed in German language and culture.

If Germany gets its immigration policies right, migrant children will set the bar for native children to meet in the classroom.

I’d be willing to bet that German parents would do everything they can to secure a school spot next to these polyglots rather than splurging thousands on lawyers’ fees to get them out.