OECD study | When classes are canceled again

Many schools lack teachers. The result: lessons are canceled more often. Photo: dpa/Hendrik Schmidt Aladin El-Mafaalani drew a drastic picture of the German education system. Society has changed rapidly in recent years. The educational sociologist compares it to a car that travels at 200 kilometers per hour - while the schools lag behind at just 10 kilometers per hour. In addition, there is a destructive zeitgeist, El-Mafaalani recently said in the ARD podcast “Politics with Anne Will”. If even the federal government repeatedly declares that the future will no longer get better, this of course has an impact on children and young people. That is anything but motivating, says El-Mafaalani.

The PISA study presented two weeks ago showed how serious the problems are. In the OECD's international comparative study, Germany performed worse than ever. A significant proportion of 15-year-olds now have difficulties with reading, writing, arithmetic and natural sciences. In some schools, more than a third of students fail to meet basic educational goals.

“We adapted too late to an increasingly heterogeneous student body,” said Federal Education Minister Karin Prien (CDU) when presenting the Pisa study. El-Mafaalani sees this as one of the biggest domestic political problems facing Germany. Children and young people are particularly likely to miss their educational goals when they grow up in difficult social and economic circumstances.

The OECD is conducting another study to examine the structural conditions of education systems worldwide. The results of the “Education at a Glance” report presented on Tuesday make it clear what importance political decisions have for the development of education systems.

Relative to its economic output, Germany invests comparatively little in daycare centers, schools and universities. Public spending on education corresponds to 4.4 percent of gross domestic product, compared to the OECD average of 4.7 percent. However, a different picture emerges when it comes to education spending per capita. Here Germany is above the average of the countries examined. Prien also referred to these efforts when presenting the OECD report in Berlin. However, she noted that the measures introduced were still lacking in effectiveness.

Despite this overall high level of spending, the shortage of teachers remains a serious problem - and not just in Germany, as OECD Secretary General Mathias Cormann emphasized: "Today it is increasingly difficult to attract, retain and deploy qualified teachers where they are most urgently needed."

In order to close gaps in teaching provision, the German education ministers are increasingly relying on career changers. According to the OECD, 18.6 percent of teachers were not fully qualified in the 2023/2024 school year. However, the study does not provide any new figures on how big the shortage actually is. The German Economic Institute (IW) assumes that there will be a shortage of around 35,000 teachers across all grades for the current school year.

As a result, there are always gaps in teaching provision. There is no current data available on this either. However, the PISA survey provides an indication of this: 55 percent of students said that the absence of teachers affected their learning. This is the second highest value in the OECD area and is twice as high as the average.

The federal government cannot fully compensate for this structural deficiency with the Starting Opportunities program, which Karin Prien referred to as an effective measure when presenting the Pisa study. Around 4,000 schools take part nationwide - around one in ten schools in Germany. The federal and state governments are jointly investing 20 billion euros over a period of ten years, from 2024 to 2034.

Among other things, the money will be used to improve the school infrastructure, recruit additional staff and develop new concepts for learning. The program is aimed primarily at schools in socially disadvantaged locations.

The Starting Opportunities program shows that politicians have taken measures to initiate a turnaround. At the same time, according to the OECD study, there are certainly developments in the German educational landscape that do not fit into the oft-sketched image of a downward spiral.

For example, more and more young people in Germany are achieving a technical college or university degree. 35 percent of Germans between the ages of 25 and 64 have now completed a degree. This is somewhat below the OECD average. At the same time, the continued high proportion of people who obtain an upper secondary level qualification shows that vocational training remains an important part of the German education system.

The dual training system consisting of practice and vocational school has also developed further in recent years. The OECD emphasizes in the study that additional qualification and further training opportunities during working life made a particular contribution to this.

In addition, a focus was recently placed on early childhood education with the expansion of daycare centers, which is now making itself felt. In 2024, around 96 percent of children between the ages of three and six attended daycare - significantly more than the OECD average, which was 90 percent. There is also a positive development in the childcare ratio: in preschool education in Germany there were an average of 7.5 children per person caring for them. On average in the countries examined there were 9.4 children.

The “Education at a Glance” report shows – in addition to the PISA study, which focuses on the skills of 15-year-olds – how the German education system is developing structurally. The shortage of teachers and the poor results in basic skills reveal serious problems. At the same time, the system has strengths such as a growing proportion of higher educational qualifications, a proven dual training system and advances in early childhood education. These developments paint a more differentiated picture of the German education system than one would expect from looking at the latest Pisa results alone.

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