Tougher German tests for school admissions

I agree ER and OG, but I disagree with the logic that since it all comes out of tax payers euros, than it doesn't matter. It is important to have accurate cost accounting. If people want to increase the funding for schools, it should be for education, not for food. If they vote for increasing funding for food, then the money should go to that, but when they become mixed I believe allows more interplay with the expenditures and people do not realize what they are paying for.

Don't think I can describe my family as (upper) middle class either. My dad worked in the steal industry, grandfather worked as a labourer for a scaffolding company and still I managed to go to a Gymnasium and get my Abitur.
Anyway, I don't agree with a selection at the age of 10 or 11 either, but where I come from a lot of students from Realschule or Hauptschule still joined us in the Gymnasium after "their" education would have been completed, if their marks where good enough, and also got their Abitur.

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Darn - what did I miss ?

I'm glad when someone gets the best education they can.

I'd suggest though that you look at the social composition of the varoius types of German school like the PISA inspectors did: Children of the higher social classes get by far and away the best deal.

Children of lower social classes tend to get dumped in the worst schools. How many of the German citizen children at that school in Neukölln have dads that are on the board of Siemens/BMW/BASF you reckon?

If you are non-Germ,an and working class you're going on average to get the absolute worst deal.
Maybe the odd bright spark will get through, but mostly skills and talents are snuffed out.
And I suspect thats part of the design.

It's an accounting thing anyway. I've no problem pying tax for school dinners, I've no problem paying tax for schools. I do have a problem with paying for yet another government jamboree.

the major part of hauptschule or realschule kids are not "dumped" there. But they have less support at home than academic kids, maybe a less stimulating enviroment in general (cause both parents work, don't read books with them, can't pay Nachhilfe, or just don't care in general), and as long as there is only half-day school, they will never be able to catch up, get worse results, won't make it to Gymnasium or fail in Gymnasium after a year or too. Whole day classes and an obligatory Kindergarten won't solve everything, but a lot.

I believe that children end up getting dumped into worse schools not becasue they lack ability but because the system is slanted against children from working class backgrounds and migrant backgrounds. PISA study seems to bear me out on that one.

True, those children may not be getting all the support at home compared to a lot of well to do German children. But I don't think the parents can be 100% blamed for that. They probably had all their joy for education ground out of them too. <paraphrase> "What's the point anyway? The best that Mehmet is going to be able to aim for is a low paid, unsecure job at BMW on the production line maybe" </end paraphrase>

The new rules go a long way to making sure that those left behind NEVER catch up.

I'm in favour of all day schools and I'm willing to pay the tax to fund it. But that is a partial solution, Germany needs throw its tiered education system into the dustbin.

They do let foreigners in - the whole 2 % of the population!!!

No, honestly, if you go there working, no problem. Not many people want to go to live in Finland, it's cold and expensive. Taxes are very high, I guess you can't imagine getting there salaries even in IT similar to salaries in Germany.

As to the dealing with foreign kids in schools, did you know that there is law in Finland according to which all children has the right to get their mother tongue classes in school? Can't really imagine myself going and asking to provide additionally two language lessons in our school here.

Coming back to the topic cafeteria costs vs. education costs, how you can organise whole day schooling with lunchboxes? I don't like the idea my son eating sandwiches day after day after day in Gymnasium (our teacher said btw that he'll go to Gymnasium ). Some alternative solution should be found, Mensa or so, subsidised cafeterias, where children have the opportunity to buy cheap warm food.

Hi Natalia,

Could I clarrify something with you?...

When you say "there is law in Finland according to which all children have the right to get their mother tongue classes in school",... do you mean that they are entitled to ask for some subjects (such as georgraphy or history) in their mother tongue. ( I read something once about meaningful education being linked to 1st langauge/mother tongue - it was an education article which discussed research that had been done on the topic, but I can't recall the article or journal, sorry) OR, do you mean that foreign children are entitled to continue to study their mother langauge in formal education? (e.g. a 10 year old Turkish child could continue to study Turkish to retain the family's mother tongue)

Do other countries have similar laws to assist the education of foreign children? If they do, does anyone know whether they are affective?

Germany has a reciprical agreement (or so I was told) where children can receive supplemental education in their native language. For example, the Argentinian boy in my son's class gets native spanish instruction on Saturdays - Spanish for native speaking children with history and culture.
However, they don't offer this for English, or French. The Kultusministerium probably has a list of languages/countries that offer this.
Many schools in the US offer bilingual support - but (as far as I understand) mainly for Spanish.
Curious about Finland though - a girlfriend of mine was an exchange student there in the 80s and only had standard English as a foreign langauge with the other students (in high school).

Yes, that's what I meant. Immgrant children have the right to get English, Russian, Turkish etc. classes in school. In reality of course it is very difficult to organise, especially in small places. When I was talking about it with our teacher when my son was in the first grade, she was seemingly scared that I'll start to require it. She said my son is not entitled to the classes, he has Finnish nationality, was born in the country etc. (which is true) The classes are meant for immigrant children.

And again it always depends on the parents. I used to know one Finnish woman, who after living in England for 8 years, returned with her two English-Finnish boys and managed to get paid English-speaking playgroup for boys on the basis of this law.

The immigration and integration issues are indeed not comparable in Finland and Germany. Finland and Finns still have very long way to go to the level of tolerance, which we can see in Germany. I think that Finland would probably change this law, if it had to deal with the amount of foreigners Germany is dealing with, but anyway at the moment this law exists

Except their not really "foreigners" as I understand it. Most of them were born here, and their parents and their grandparents and quite soon their great grandparents.

It's the 19th Century citizenship laws that allows the state to kack all over 10% of the population nationally, 30% of the population in some districts in inner Munich.

Sweden has a similar thing to Finland in that it offers language tuition for children whose home language isn't Swedish. It is called "hemspråksundervisning" i.e. home language teaching. It doesn't cover history, geography etc but the aim is to ensure that "immigrant" children learn to read and write properly in their home language. Is funded 100% by the state and as far as I know, kids are entitled to it from 1st grade.
Obviously if you have a language that is not that common, it might be difficult to find a teacher in the area, but certainly in the bigger cities, you are able to get support for most "mainstream" languages. My girlfriend who lived in a small city got 12 years of Hungarian tuition for example and other Swedish/English couples we know are already taking advantage of the English tuition for their kids. I've even heard of one who got the support at kindergarten.

Of course ... it all has to be funded by the Swedish taxpayers and I wont even go into what you pay in the way of taxes in Sweden ... ! I think the official statistics are that 10% of the Swedish population are classified as foreigners. The classification system is a bit weird though. My son, born in Sweden of a Swedish father but foreign mother is a Swedish citizen by birth, but is classified as an immigrant for census purposes because he is "not Swedish" enough!

considerably less than in Germany*

* assuming you include the mandatory health insurance