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High school student (symbol image)
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The corona crisis has changed a lot in terms of schools.
But new rituals have long since developed: no sooner have the decisions of the Chancellery been announced than the prime ministers rush in front of the cameras.
There, unity is simulated, which only consists of the fact that each country does what it wants in the end.
Schools closed, alternating lessons, emergency care, face-to-face lessons for final classes ...
To the authors
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Mathias Brodkorb
Photo: Rainer Jensen / picture alliance / dpa
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Katja Koch
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Private
Mathias Brodkorb
was Minister of Culture in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania from 2011 to 2016 and advocated standardizing the Abitur in Germany.
Until the end of 2019 he was a member of the SPD in the Schwerin state parliament.
Together with the
educational researcher Katja Koch
, professor at the University of Rostock, he wrote the book "Der Abitur fraud - On the failure of German educational federalism. A polemic".
16 federal states and just as many solutions.
This is called educational federalism.
While you are allowed to go to school in one country, in the other you sit in digital lessons - if there is any.
It is clear that this is seen as unjust.
And that's it.
The corona crisis only acts like a magnifying glass: Everything that is a disaster today was already a grievance and will continue to be so afterwards.
A prime example of this is the Abitur.
What was not discussed last summer: canceling exams?
Postpone exams?
Let exams take place?
The complete chaos.
In the end, high school graduates had to compete despite the pandemic, often with a face mask and a minimum distance - and almost everywhere did just as well on average as in previous years.
Unfortunately, the range between the federal states also remained: in city-states such as Hamburg and Berlin, around half of the class continued to obtain the Abitur, whereas in Bavaria only a third.
Bavaria and Saxony lead in all relevant school performance comparisons, while the largest city-states usually lag behind.
So it may be that Corona has created new injustices.
The ones that already exist always remain.
Now the second Corona Abitur is ahead of us, and everything starts all over again.
The students give everything to learn as successfully as possible.
Federalism, on the other hand, learns nothing.
A new country agreement should fix it
The Abitur should finally be fairer and of equal value!
The education ministers of the federal states have been assuring this for years.
They speak to their people from their hearts: According to the Ifo Education Barometer of September 2020, almost 90 percent of Germans want standardized Abitur exams.
There is only a huge gap in implementation.
The Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (KMK) struggles its way forward at the pace of a tortoise - even if it always sounds very different to the outside world.
The then President Stefanie Hubig (SPD) spoke of a “historic day for education in Germany” last autumn.
At that time, the committee agreed on the "Land agreement on the common basic structure of the school system and the state responsibility of the federal states in central educational policy issues".
But what will change once again: little.
Too little.
more on the subject
Resolutions about school openings: Then everyone can do what they want by Silke Fokken
Icon: Spiegel Plus School-leaving qualifications in the corona crisis: The school-leaving exam by Silke Fokken, Kristin Haug and Armin Himmelrath
The actual standardization and comparability of the Abitur is not found in the country agreement.
Corresponding "specifications" are made there on less than half a page of around 30.
But when it comes to the Abitur, the minister-presidents only determine what the ministers of education should specify in future: for "educational standards, a pool of Abitur tasks and the harmonization of the structural framework for the upper secondary school".
The hot ball is rolled back to the very place where the drama once began.
The task pool as a fake
The establishment of a nationwide pool for Abitur examination tasks began as early as 2007.
For some years now, the federal states have been feeding high school exams into this pool and can then make use of it.
Mind you: so far only if you want to.
From 2023 they will have to take 50 percent of their tasks.
However, this regulation only affects a few subjects.
Initially four, from 2025 seven: mathematics, German, English, French, physics, chemistry and biology.
The regulation does not apply to most of the 40 or so Abitur examination subjects.
In order to uncover the latest KMK bluff, you have to delve deeper into the German Abitur chaos and master the little math.
If the high school graduate actually chooses two pool subjects for three written and one oral exam, the maximum "equivalence" can be easily calculated.
In the two pool subjects, 50 percent of the tasks can come from the pool, in the other two subjects it is zero percent.
In total, a maximum of 25 percent of the tasks can come from the pool.
However, only a third of the exam grades are included in the Abitur grade.
This means that the guaranteed equivalence of the Abitur will be exactly 8.33 percent from 2025.
Nobody likes to be caught with contradictions between self-marketing and action.
Calling this change a "historic day" does not exactly cast a favorable light on education in Germany.
Especially since even this 8.33 percent is not yet true.
Because the countries can manipulate the level of difficulty of the Abitur without the pool guards even noticing.
All you have to do is reduce the scope of the subject areas relevant to the examination.
According to studies by biology professor Hans Peter Klein, you can get away with two subject areas in the Bremen biology graduate school, while in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania you have to master six.
This is manipulation without any violation of the rules.
And as if that weren't enough - not even the awarding of grades is fair.
In 2016 the federal states agreed on a uniform grade scale for the written Abitur exams in the core subjects.
An internal document of the KMK from 2018 shows, however, that four federal states completely refrain from using the central grade scale in German: Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein.
The violations have no consequences.
All inquiries to the responsible education ministries about this have remained unanswered to this day.
And of course there is a reason for that: Nobody likes to be caught in the face of contradictions between self-marketing and action.
Against this background, it is easy to understand why the KMK ultimately refrained from initiating a state treaty.
The country agreement is a program text without any legal obligation.
You can violate them just as without consequences as against your own decisions for decades.
Only a state treaty with the force of law could have changed that.
The biggest weak point is the Standing Conference itself
Last year, the Baden-Württemberg Minister of Education, Susanne Eisenmann (CDU), had fought for such a legally binding state treaty between the states: "All 16 education ministers have to recognize that we have our backs to the wall." at some point would take the helm in hand, then the Conference of Ministers of Education made itself "superfluous".
After all, this is an open-hearted admission.
So the debate is by no means just about the matter, but also about questions of institutional self-preservation.
Despite Eisenmann's efforts, nothing came of the State Treaty.
It is now replaced by a mere "country agreement".
In other words: in case of doubt, each country can continue to do what it wants - up to and including the termination of the agreement.
And nobody could legally defend themselves against it.
Defend federalism against federalism
The depressing reality of German educational federalism therefore leaves little room for hope that decisive changes will be made in terms of educational level and equality.
How should Bavaria and Berlin ever agree on an equivalent high school diploma?
In Berlin, the number of high school graduates would have to halve with an honest Abitur at the Bavarian level.
If the students in a class were presented with completely different tasks for examination, depending on their ability, and all of them received the same grade at the end, the public outcry would be rightly loud.
But that is exactly what has been a reality in the "Federal Republic of Germany school class" for decades.
If you want to make your Abitur or other school-leaving qualifications fair, you cannot avoid central final exams.
For this purpose, the framework plans and timetables of the federal states would have to be adjusted and actually binding grade standards introduced.
But the KMK is stuck in its own corset: the unanimity principle applies in important matters.
And as sure as the amen in church, at least one is always against it.
After all, the next state election will always take place somewhere soon.
If the federal government is not responsible for central issues of the education system, there will be no equivalence of school leaving qualifications in the future either.
As paradoxical as it may sound: Only the shift of central competencies in school policy to the federal government would make a real competitive federalism in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany possible.
With the same performance requirements without the possibility of manipulation, each country would have to show what is actually in its school system.
For the first time, federalism would make sense in education.
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