Despite all prophecies of doom because of the difficult math exams: The Abitur at the Bavarian grammar schools was apparently very good.
Munich -
The statements are the same.
“A third of all high school graduates have a one before the decimal point,” reports Thomas Höhenleitner, headmaster of the grammar school in Markt Indersdorf.
"42 out of 120 students have a 1s", says Rainer Dlugosch, headmaster in Miesbach.
"A two is no longer good for us, that's not normal." Another voice, this time from Weilheim: "65 high school graduates have at least a 1.9," says Beate Sitek from the local high school.
“That's almost 50 percent.” The list goes on: At the grammar school in Dorfen there is an average of 2.06 - almost half of the high school graduates, 48 out of 114, have a one before the decimal point.
At the Bruckmühl grammar school (Rosenheim district) there are around a third of the 74 students.
A special corona rule helped
For the President of the German Teachers' Association, Heinz-Peter Meidinger, the very good results are no surprise. “I dare the prognosis: The section will be better than last year.” Again and again cited as the reason for the A-level inflation at the grammar school is a special Corona provision: the double cheaper regulation. It said that students could replace their performance in section 11/1 with that in section 12/1 - provided that the grades were then better. "The start in the upper school is sometimes bumpy," says Walter Baier, headmaster in Bruckmühl. Therefore, many students have benefited from this scheme. Another benefit of the students was that they only had to write exams in the main subjects in section 12/2 - oral grades were sufficient in all other subjects.The distance lessons are also helpful to students who can organize themselves when preparing for the Abitur, says Boris Hackl, headmaster at the Gröbenzell grammar school. And the corona lockdown of the past few months had another positive side effect: "The celebrations were canceled for the students," says the headmaster Höhenleitner. "What remained was learning."
The graduation marks are getting better year after year
The glut of A's is apparently the temporary high point of a trend that has been going on for years. Since the introduction of the eight-year high school, the number of very good high school graduates has been increasing steadily, reports Meidinger. This is shown by the statistics of the Standing Conference. In 2006 the cut in Bavaria was 2.43. 0.95 percent of high school graduates had a 1.0. This has continuously improved: in 2011 there was an average grade of 2.37 (1.27 percent with 1.0), in 2016 the average fell to 2.32 (1.9 percent with 1.0). Last year, high school graduates had an average of 2.29 - and 2.3 percent had the dream grade of 1.0. In 2021, the Ministry of Culture expects a cut between 2.1 and 2.2. One reason for this is that in the upper level oral and written performance in a ratio of 1:1 - and many students are better verbally than in writing. For headmistress Sitek from Weilheim, the trend towards ever better grades is worrying. “A loss of quality is unmistakable.” This could intensify when the first students in the re-introduced G9 year graduate from high school in 2026. German and maths remain compulsory Abitur subjects - but an oral exam is sufficient in one of the two.
The complaints about a too difficult written math Abitur exam are not reflected in the Abitur certificates, which will be distributed across Bavaria on July 16. A petition asking for a discount on banknotes found many signatories. But the headmasters give the all-clear. "Mathematics turned out to be quite normal," reports Beate Sitek from Weilheim.