Declines in performance among elementary school students
Study in Germany shows serious decline in competency
by Marita Brune-Koch
(9 August 2022) The proportion of children who fail to meet the educational standards set by the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany1 has risen sharply. This was revealed by the Institute for Quality Development in a study.2
“Compared to 2016, the declines in competency [at the end of the fourth school year, author’s note] correspond to about a third of a school year in reading, half a school year in listening skills, and a quarter of a school year each in spelling and mathematics.” These are average scores for all students. Children from socially disadvantaged families and those with an immigrant background fell behind even more significantly.
When looking at the results of the study, it is important to keep in mind that the drop in performance within the last few years is even much larger, as significant learning lags were already measured in 2016.3 This shows that the educational malaise cannot be solely a result of the Corona Crisis lockdown, even if it has been accentuated by it.
“Didactics of neglect”
The children move on to secondary schools with these deficits in basic skills and knowledge. The Philologenverband – the association of grammar school teachers – and the Realschullehrerverband4 are therefore sounding the alarm. The Rhineland-Palatinate Philologists’ Association sees the cause of this misery in “harmful didactics”. The elementary school didactics is almost a “didactics of neglect”.5
In concrete terms: “Errors are only corrected rudimentary and therefore are imprinted in the children’s heads, teacher-led whole class teaching and learning phases are branded as teacher-centred, and memorising in arithmetic is no longer even considered.
Such an approach has been driving us toward an abyss for years, but during the pandemic and the phases of distance learning, this approach was even more doomed to failure.”
“End this madness”
The philologists’ association’s demands to education policymakers is clear and consistent: “End this madness! Make sure that harmful didactics are revised as quickly as possible and that children are spared the suffering of ultimate failure!
Consistent spelling and correction of mistakes, the learning of a fluent handwriting, more quietness and concentration in the classroom, math books that do not elaborate five different ways of calculating, but first practice one meaningful calculation procedure, not on three mini-tasks, but until the calculation can be carried out confidently and carefully – this would already help a lot, while being completely cost-neutral. You just have to free yourself from the ideological blinkers of many a didacticist.”
Professor Susanne Lin-Klitzing of the German Philologists’ Association considers it indispensable and that, in addition to the written procedures of addition, subtraction and multiplication, the written procedure of division is also to be introduced.”6
Neither equal opportunities nor fair chances
The study further shows that the performance of children from educationally disadvantaged families and those with an immigrant background in particular has dropped at an above-average rate. In other words, the gap between children from “educationally advantaged” and “educationally disadvantaged” families is widening.
The goal of equal opportunity, which was still aimed for in the 1970s, is increasingly being missed, if not abandoned altogether. School success is increasingly dependent on whether parents are capable and have the time to work through the school material and practice with their children at home, or whether they are financially able to pay for additional expensive lessons, to learn the actual content after all.
The once self-evident goal that school is essentially responsible for teaching the students, the contents of the subjects and to support them in their learning has obviously been largely abandoned.
And in Switzerland?
Switzerland has adopted this “harmful elementary school didactics” one-to-one. The same methods have been applied here for years, and teachers are trained accordingly. In the “Lehrplan 21” (curriculum 21), this didactic approach was finally codified and made binding for all. There was a referendum on this. In the referendum campaign, the initiators pointed out precisely these consequences, which have now become visible by the study in Germany.
At the time, the majority of citizens could not imagine that schools would be turned upside down in such a way that students would no longer be taught the subjects systematically. So, the “Lehrplan 21” was accepted.
Now, experienced practitioners in Switzerland have seen for a long time and more and more clearly that the learning performance is declining, that the skills to listen and to deal with the contents is declining, that systematic practicing is no longer being carried out, and that reading skills – especially reading comprehension – and spelling, and the basics of mathematics are no longer being taught, and that multiplication tables and written arithmetic are no longer being mastered.
When will there be an awakening and a turnaround here?
1 Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs: Body of the ministers of education and cultural affairs of all German states. In Germany, the sovereignty for education lies with the federal states. In the Kultusministerkonferenz (Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs), those responsible in the states reach nationwide agreements.
2 IQB Education Trend 2021 study, www.iqb.hu-berlin.de/bt/BT2021
3 IQB Education Trend 2021 – Deutscher Philologenverband e. V. (dphv.de).
4 The German Realschule is roughly equivalent to the Swiss Sekundarschule.
5 Cornelia Schwartz, state chairwoman, and Jochen Ring, press officer of the Rhineland-Palatinate Philologists’ Association, www.philologenverband.de/diverses/texte/news/zu-den-ergebnissen-des-iqb-bildungstrends-2021-der-grundschulen-philologenverband-rheinland-pfalz
6 IQB Education Trend 2021 – Deutscher Philologenverband e. V. (dphv.de)