Many federal states deny their students access to old final exams.
Instead, they sell off the tasks to the Stark publishing house, which sells them on at high prices - poor families are unlucky.
This analysis is available
to IPPEN.MEDIA as part of a cooperation with the Bildungs.Table Professional Briefing -
Bildungs.Table
first published it
on April 12, 2023.
Old exams help high school graduates to prepare for their exams.
But many ministries of education guard the Abitur assignments like a treasure.
Students often do not have access.
Instead, the ministries do business with the Stark publishing house, as research by FragDenstaat and Wikimedia Germany reveals.
The two NGOs knocked on the door of the ministries for the "Versicherungssache" campaign by asking about the freedom of information laws.
Table.Media and the Süddeutsche Zeitung were able to exclusively evaluate the research material before publication.
The query shows that in many federal states, parents and students cannot simply use the tasks that were created with tax money.
Instead, they have to buy expensive exercise books from Stark-Verlag - cost point: up to 15 euros per booklet.
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Abitur preparation: Nine federal states deny students access
Nine out of 16 countries do not give students full access to the old exams - they neither publish the tasks nor give students protected access.
Only the teachers can use it to prepare their lessons.
In four federal states, students can access the tasks with a password via a portal - in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, for example, via itslearning.
Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein publish the tasks of all school types and subjects online in a low-threshold manner - "to give everyone the same opportunity to prepare for the final exams on the basis of these tasks," says Lower Saxony.
Abitur: Old exams: 15 euros per exercise book
The ministries justify keeping their protective hand over old final papers by saying that they do not own copyright for large parts of the exams.
"I think that's an excuse.
The underlying materials can often already be found online and could be linked,” says Max Kronmüller, who runs the campaign for FragDenStaat.
GEW school expert Anja Bensinger-Stolze points out that the copyright argument does not seem to play a role in Lower Saxony.
How students can prepare for the final exams depends on the federal state in which they go to school.
And what her parents' wallets will hold.
Because they often only have to buy the red exercise booklets from Stark-Verlag.
For this they have to put up to 15 euros per issue on the table.
Not every family can afford that – especially not for four or five subjects.
"The egg dance that the states perform is a small but significant example of why equal opportunities and educational success in Germany are still linked to the social status of the family," says trade unionist Bensinger-Stolze.
"Students from high-income families have an advantage," adds Lilli Iliev from Wikimedia.
Ministries sell Abi tasks
The contracts, seen by Table.Media, show how the countries and Stark are working together.
The publisher did not comment on request.
Several states earn money directly: Brandenburg charges the publisher a fee of 200 euros per subject and type of school, in Rhineland-Palatinate it is 100 euros.
In Baden-Württemberg, a flat rate of 200 euros is due, plus the state requires four percent of net sales.
The state of Hesse discloses the contract, but does not specify how much money it receives from Stark-Verlag.
Reason: Exact figures could be "advantageous for the publisher's competitors".
The two NGOs want to sue.
In Hamburg, on the other hand, as in other countries, examination documents are exempt from the Transparency Act, so they do not have to be published on request.
Instead, the ministry leaves them free of charge to Stark-Verlag.
"While students in Hamburg have no chance of taking the exams, they are given to the publisher, who then earns a lot of money with them.
That can hardly be surpassed in cheek,” comments Kronmüller from FragDenstaat.
Countries insist on “private purchase decisions”
The ministries insist that the parents ultimately make the decision.
"A purchase from private publishers is not necessary for students who take their Abitur or who are aiming for a secondary school diploma," says Saxony-Anhalt, for example.
This is a "private purchase decision that we do not evaluate," adds the Ministry of Education in Rhineland-Palatinate.
Old Abitur exams are also published via the task pool of the federal states: "Here the students will find a large number of Abitur tasks that have been used since 2017," explains a spokesman.
NGOs want to conclude treaties with countries themselves
Kronmüller does not go far enough.
The ministries would have to ensure that students of all types of school easily get the documents they need.
“We are talking about publicly funded documents here.
Therefore, they should also be public goods.”
FragDenstaat and Wikimedia Germany plan to conclude their own contracts with the states and publish the documents online - so that the parents' wallets no longer decide how students can prepare for their final exams.
Torben Bennink
List of rubrics: © Sebastian Kahnert / dpa
