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High school graduates during an exam in Bautzen
Photo: Sebastian Kahnert / dpa
The exams had hardly been written before protests broke out.
In an online petition, a woman, on behalf of all Bavarian high school graduates, demanded a "fair mathematics test" and an increase in the graduation key.
At a point in time, mind you, when the grades were not even fixed.
Her accusation: The Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs paid too little attention to the pandemic situation, for example the fact that pupils switched between distance and face-to-face lessons and had to wear mouth and nose protection during the exam.
SPD parliamentary group demands review of the tasks
More than 37,500 people signed the petition within a few days - although, according to the Ministry of Culture, only around 35,000 candidates had taken their Abitur in Bavaria.
You don't need an advanced math course to see the absurdity.
Incidentally, the storm had not instigated a high school graduate, but a woman who describes herself as a "lecturer, coach and book author" and claims to have accompanied more than 500 high school graduates before the exams this year.
As a result, the SPD parliamentary group in Bavaria also asked the Ministry of Culture to review the tasks.
more on the subject
Ex-minister of education and education researcher accuse: "The Abitur is shitty from start to finish" An interview by Miriam Olbrisch
Education: "This is basic knowledge"
School in the corona crisis: the Abitur has never been fairBy Armin Himmelrath and Miriam Olbrisch
This means that the Abitur exams are once again a political issue.
They are currently being criticized not only in Bavaria, but also elsewhere in Germany.
There now seem to be petitions in many places.
More than 1100 signatories are demanding better grades for the Hamburg biology examination.
Two petitions with several thousand supporters criticize the level of the mathematics exams in North Rhine-Westphalia.
In Saxony, the protest is more general, there are not individual examination subjects, but the entire Abitur is questioned.
More than 14,000 people signed it.
How fair can exams in a state of emergency be?
High school graduates or their self-appointed advocates hope to influence the outcome of the school leaving examination through maximum public resistance. As if the one who screams the loudest gets the best rating. The Corona school year 2020/2021 gives the protesters a new argument. How fair can an exam be if large parts of the preparation time took place in a state of emergency? But the criticism comes to nothing.
Numerous ministries of education reacted early on to the special circumstances of the Abitur 2021 and adjusted the examination modalities.
In a letter from the Bavarian State Institute for School Quality and Educational Research, it was already stated in autumn 2020 that due to the “special learning situation”, for example, the integral function, actually a classic of the Abitur material, “as an object and a term is not the subject of the examination”.
The same applies to the functions of sine and cosine.
They would "also not be analyzed, derived or integrated with regard to their properties."
More time, more choices
Other federal states, including North Rhine-Westphalia, Hamburg and Baden-Wuerttemberg, gave the examinees more time or more opportunities to choose from a selection of examination questions those that appeared feasible to them.
Representatives of the graduating classes had also stressed on various occasions beforehand that of course they did not want to have an exam for free, no extra sausages, no special treatment - no »Corona Abitur«.
Because that might not look good on your CV.
Accordingly, the ministries of culture are reacting relentlessly to the Internet protest.
"NRW is not planning to raise grades," says the Ministry of Education in Düsseldorf.
The examination tasks were appropriate and in line with the curriculum and corresponded to "nationwide standards".
Bavaria's Minister of Education, Michael Piazolo (Free Voters) told Main-Post: "This year's Abitur exam tasks in mathematics were judged by the experts to be generally feasible." Even in normal years, high school graduates are tense in the examination phase, according to the minister . "In this year marked by Corona, this tension is certainly even more prevalent among many, I can understand that very well."
Only Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania has so far adjusted the grading of the mathematics exam.
The exams on the coast have already been evaluated and were exceptionally bad this year.
However, this is not due to the pandemic, but to the hastily implemented upper school reform and the introduction of basic and advanced courses, explains a spokesman for Education Minister Bettina Martin (SPD).
After all, "at most eight school days" were canceled for the high school graduates in the past school year.
»We have always focused on the final classes.
We wanted to enable optimal preparation in this special situation. "
Collaboration: Silke Fokken
