Posted 2 January Has anyone here put a kid through the Orientierungsstufe school on Quiddesstraße? How did you find it? Did your child improve in their grades or was it just more of the same? Was the environment high pressured? 0 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 2 January I don't have an up-to-date story. But one of my best friends attended the Orientierungsstufe at Quiddestr. 4. It is not an extra school, but a few rooms in the same building that also houses the Werner-von-Siemens Gymnasium and the Werner-von-Siemens Realschule. The Orientierungsstufe is squeezed in between both. Despite her actually having had a much better grade average in 4th grade than the 2.33 necessary get into the Gymnasium, her parents had sent her to the Orientierungsstufe. The problem was that her parents were not academics and were leery of sending her to the Gymnasium right away, preferring to send her to the Orientierungsstufe to find out whether her good Grundschule grades had just been a fluke. I returned to Munich at the start of the 9th grade (had left after 3rd grade), and there at the Werner-von-Siemens-Gymnasium, she was, the one sitting alone in that classroom. So I sat down next to her. The people I had known from elementary school who were at that Gymnasium were in parallel classes, not in in the Maths/sciences branch with French as the first foreign language, so I didn't know anyone either. I quickly found out that she was shy, so when she didn't participate in class, it wasn't because she didn't know it, she always came in prepared. And of course I spent the Pausen with her (before, she had just hid in a space under the stairs in the big hall during the große Pause) and made her participate in class, nudging her to "sich melden". And joked and made fun of teachers ;-) As they soppily say: it was the start of a beautiful friendship. We are friends to this day. She ended up doing her Abitur with a good 2.x average - but she did have to go and choose Art and French as her Leistungskurse, both subjects where you actually need talent (artistic and for languages) to get excellent marks. Any other combination, ideally containing Economics (a subject where she got more points than me, may I add!) and she could have gotten a 1.8, at least. I took the easy path, Maths and Physics, the "easiest" subjects for people with aptitude in that area, since we just need to "understand" them, not learn things by heart. And of course English, easiest way to 15 points (which is a 1+) there is for someone who actually went to school in an English-speaking country ;-) But back to my friend. The other kids in the Gymnasium had been together since 5th grade and they were letting her feel that she wasn't "one of them", after all, she had been in the Orientierungsstufe... None of them knew she could have joined them right away in 5th grade, that only her parents' doubts had caused those 2 years of hell in the Orientierungsstufe for her. She had been bullied by the kids in the Orientierungsstufe (called a Streberin and so on, just because she was quietly determined to finally be allowed to attend the Gymnasium), but she didn't give up and she got the grades necessary to switch to the Gymnasium. Because that is all the Orientierungsstufe is: additional pressure, by having to get good enough grades to be allowed into the Gymnasium after 6th grade, which actually meant better grades than pupils in the 6th grade of the Gymnasium had to have to continue to the 7th grade of the Gymnasium. If I remember correctly, only 3 or 4 kids from her class made the cut (no surprise that these were the kids who had had the Gymnasialeignung from the start, i.e. a grade average of 2.33 or better in 4th grade - so basically, they had just wasted their time with Orientierungsstufe). The rest went on to the Hauptschule or the Realschule. Realschule back then started in 7th grade, so the ones who ended up inthe Realschule didn't miss out on the fraternisation that takes place at the start, like she had with the Gymnasium, which starts with 5th grade. The way things are now, with Realschule starting in the 5th grade, even the kids that fail the Orientierungsstufe will have missed 2 years of being in that class, with all the social consequences of not being part of the "pack". ***************************************************************************** Here some more up-to-date sources. Reviews of the Orientierungsstufe: interviews with former pupils of the Orientierungsstufe: https://www-ori--neuperlach-de.translate.goog/ueber-uns-erfahrungen/?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp Google Reviews: https://www-google-com.translate.goog/maps/place/St%C3%A4dtische+schulartunabh%C3%A4ngige+Orientierungsstufe/@48.1097364,11.6488416,15z/data=!3m1!5s0x479de00b847c4015:0x4c9dc93e16196145!4m7!3m6!1s0x0:0x4af224811a75c59c!8m2!3d48.1097364!4d11.6488416!9m1!1b1?ucbcb=1&_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp Yelp: https://www.yelp.de/biz/st%C3%A4dtische-schulartunabh%C3%A4ngige-orientierungsstufe-m%C3%BCnchen And I'm sure you have also already found the Süddeutsche article on the Orientierungsstufe, which explains who attends the Orientierungsstufe now, with them reserving 20% (= 60/300) of the spaces for pupils with Gymnasialeignung, you need to check whether more than 20% of the Ori pupils go on to the Gymnasium. If not, I think you have your answer: https://www-sueddeutsche-de.translate.goog/muenchen/orientierungsstufe-in-neuperlach-zwei-jahre-schonfrist-1.2201712-0?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp My advice: Before you decide, I suggest you go there on a school day, walk around the school yard and observe. Neuperlach has gotten "rougher" over time, this will be reflected in the interactions between kids that you will see in that school yard. Pupils from all 3 institutions share the same yard, since it really is just one building. 5 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 3 January Thank you, PandaMunich, for taking the time to write such a rich reply! We have already scheduled a visit and I will go through all the links you gave. 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
