"Maybe we sort too soon."

[mothwing]

In the Potterverse, the future life of a child is determined when they are eleven without any possibility of changing that later on by sorting the child into one of the four houses, influencing how it is going to be perceived later in life, as it says a lot on their character, influencing also its peer group. In Germany, the same happens at the same age, and possibly even earlier. In the Potterverse, a magical hat determines where you are to be sent, and the decision is based on your character. The system is infinitely better than the system currently employed by the German education system.

The decision, which is allegedly based on the competences of the child, is very much influenced by factors like the milieu the parents are from, by nationality and ethnicity, by economical factors. Of course there are many people who are sorted according to their competences, but there are clear tendencies that show that the people who end up in the school they do end up in because of other factors.

The language is the first barrier. The children who are on the records because they have been born in Germany are lately subjected to a general language test when they are between four and five to determine their ability to speak German. If it is found to be insufficient, their parents are adised to send them to the kindergarten to prepare them for school. We have two pre-school forms, the kindergarten and something called Vorschule, which is a pre-school prep-schoool. There are both secular and confessional kindergartens, and only a certain quota of non-confessional children can attend a confessional kindergarten. If you are too poor to afford it or don’t get the vouchers you need for the number of hours you need your child to be looked after, you can’t send your child to the kindergarten.

Many people with a migratory background have been sending their child to the pre-school rather than to the kindergarten when that was still free so that their children could learn German. 90% of the children with a German background attend either kindergarten or pre-school, only 80% of children with a migratory background do. If you don’t learn German before you come to school and then have to go to school because of the law which states that all children in Germany – apart from people who are seeking asylum – have to attend schools, it gets problematic. There is very little opportunity to learn in in schools. There have been a projects which offer formal instruction in German a couple of times a week, but if students have to keep up with the course content at the same time as learning the language it is taught in, that poses difficulties.

The first school all children attend to together is the Grundschule, basic school, primary school. If you are found unfit for school because you can’t speak the language properly or because you are just not ready yet, you are sent to a Schulkindergarten, another prep-instance, to learn – if one is available in the vicinity, it suits the school, and it fits the general policy of the individual school. For most people, it’s the first bad experience with schools.

Once the children attend the Grundschule, they spend four years together. Unless they are still not fit for school because they are diagnosed (often by the teacher) with a learning disability. Then they are sent to a Sonderschule (special school), or Förderschule (special school for the learning disabled, like the one I work at). This happens when teachers are at their wit’s end and think that the children would benefit from the different school system, as they can expect a different treatment there. There are tests to determine whether the child is really not fit for school, the parents are consulted, and after three or four month, the child is sent there. It is a mark of the intelligence of the German school system that most of the tests are in German.

If the children are not sent to a special school, they can still be forced to repeat a year, which tests have shown has a zero educational effect and only costs time, money and motivation.

If the children come through primary school, which many do without any difficulties, they are sorted into different school forms at the end of the fourth year. In some of our länder, the school recommendation of the teachers is the last word, in others, like Hamburg, the parents can decide.

This letter determines whether the child is sent to a Hauptschule, Realschule or Gymnasium. The Hauptschule is the lowest school qualification you can attain in Germany as a non-disabled human. If you have a Hauptschulabschluss, a Hauptschul diploma only, you can only do low-paid job or an apprenticeship.

The next higher degree is the Realschulabschluss. With that, you can’t get into higher education, but you can do slightly different jobs than with a Hauptschulabschluss. You can do apprenticeships or training with a firm. These two used to be the main degrees everybody in the country had, but lately, the third degree has become the accepted standard, more or less.

The only degree that allows you to enter higher education is the Abitur, which is taken at the end of our Gymnasium or grammar school. With an Abitur, you can do all of the above and study, which you cannot with the other degrees.

It is determined, according to cognitive abilities, or so they say, which system a child ends up in – and the system with the magical hat is far more realistic and takes into account the personality and needs of the child far better than our system does. If they are thought to be unfit for the high strains of the Gymnasium, they are sent to a Realschule, if that is still too demanding, to the Hauptschule. The point of this was once to create more homogeneous groups in which the students could be supported and educated according to their needs.

It is striking how much the family background determines the teachers’ recommendations regardless of the student’s performance in school. There are several studies which show a clear connection between the milieu, the financial means of the family, the nationality, and the recommendation the child receives.

A German child from a middle-class background and a 3 average is 4.6 timed more likely to be sent to a Gymnasium than a child with a migrational background and less money with the same mark. There is a very obvious correlation between a certain class bonus the middle and upper class receive and the recommendations issued. Given what you can do with the degrees of the Hauptschule this means that the people with working class backgrounds stay in the working class, while people from the middle and upper middle class only very rarely have another degree of education than their parents.

It is technically possible to change from one school form back into another if the school thinks that you are too good for this school, but effectively, it happens as good as never, and in the rare cases in which it does it is usually in families in which the parents of the child have a higher degree of education than the child and are interested and concerned about their child’s education. Usually, being in a Hauptschule is a dead end that means you are going to work badly paying jobs all your life. The cases in which someone with a Hauptschul-degree end up in leading positions is infinitesimally small. Of course such cases exist, but usually, if your child is admitted to a Hauptschule, that means that they are doomed to a life of badly paid jobs. At eleven.

There are mixed schools, too, at which both an Abitur and a Realschulabschluss can be attained. These are highly esteemed by our education ministers, and maybe they offer better chances for all children regardless of their performance in school, at least children are not as segregated from children in another school form there. These employ a course system that, I am told, I very much like the course system in American High Schools where students can pick the levels of proficiency the courses offer themselves. If they have only the highest courses, they can sit their Abitur and can study, if not, they cannot. Still, the peer group is heterogeneous. Since these schools focus very much on supporting weaker students they have become an unlikely choice for children with a recommendation for attending the Gymnasium, as many parents fear that their child will not become as proficient as they would if they were in a group with what the German school system has decided are better students. I don’t know much about whether these concerns are true.

What is true for all school forms, however, is that the marks are heavily influenced by other factors than the performance in school in Germany. Low income of the parents, low degrees of the parents as well as nationality and background are important determiners of a good mark. Again, there is a positive middle- and upper-class bias.

The majority of the children who are sorted into the Förderschule, the special school for the learning disabled,  do not have to go there because they really have an impairment of some kind, but because they come from a poor background and because their German isn’t up to scratch. They are the losers of our educational system and completely ignored in public debates on our educational system. The fact that everybody always talks about a “three-fold system” only supports this.

Physical and mental handicaps are as forgotten. They are sorted into Sonderschulen right from the beginning. If the handicap is only physical or not considered grave enough to be excluded from regular classes, they are placed into so-called “I-Klassen”, integrational forms in regular schools which offer support for them, too. They are sadly decreasing for some reason.

As for what is done about the most obvious problem, learning German, our government couldn’t care less. There are very few offers for learning German, and most of them have to be financed privately, for which most immigrants just do not have the means. At schools, the children are put into regular forms straight away and forced to undergo a process of extreme immersion, trying to keep up with the course content while at the same time acquiring a language without being formally instructed. Fun times.

Of late, there have been, in Hamburg and Munich, some attempts to establish special forms in which students can learn German first, before they are put into regular classes. The other parts of Germany have yet to wake up and realise that we do indeed have several people in this country who do not speak German and who might benefit from istructions. The funds granted for such projects are very scarce, as our government does not consider formal language instruction to be its business.

Our politicians should definitely think about the magic-hat system. It's fairer, and it's at least  based on the child's character.