Enlarge image
»Consolation Abitur« in the corona crisis?
Photo: Sina Schuldt / dpa
At least on paper, high school graduates seem to have felt little of the much-described educational misery during the corona crisis.
According to a newspaper report, despite the pandemic, there has recently been an increase in top grades in final exams throughout Germany.
In 2022, at least every fourth high school graduate in every federal state achieved an average grade between 1.0 and 1.9 in the final certificate, reported the "Stuttgarter Zeitung" and "Stuttgarter Nachrichten", citing the grade statistics of the Conference of Ministers of Education (KMK) for the past examination year.
In eight federal states, at least a third of the high school graduates cut off at this level.
More than 40 percent with A-Abitur in Thuringia and Saxony
The numbers do not say anything about the reasons why the grades have improved.
However, experts have warned time and again of "grade inflation" in view of the worsening development over the years.
As a result, grades could be worth less and less - and the standard of education could drop at the same time.
So was there a lot of »consolation Abis« in the corona crisis - or was there perhaps an increase in performance, for example because many leisure activities were no longer available?
One thing is clear: because of the pandemic, the ministers of education had agreed that the students should not be worse off than the years before them when it came to grading.
According to the newspaper report, the KMK statistics registered most high school graduates with a grade of one before the decimal point with values of more than forty percent in Thuringia and Saxony.
In Brandenburg, Hesse, Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, 35 percent or more candidates achieved such final results.
It was also said that compared to 2019, the last regular examination year before the start of the pandemic, there had been double-digit growth in the proportion of top certificates in the Abitur in some regions of Germany.
In Baden-Württemberg there was an increase of eleven and in Berlin of ten percentage points.
Apr/AFP