Education - School senator Rabe on Pisa results: to be expected
Math, reading, science - in these areas, young people in Germany will achieve the lowest scores ever measured in the Pisa study in 2022. Hamburg's school senator Ties Rabe is not surprised. "The results were to be expected. We must finally clearly identify the causes in the public debate," said the SPD politician.
All learning assessments after 2020 showed that the long period of school closures and teaching restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic had led to significant learning deficits - in Germany and many other European countries. "In addition, the student body has changed significantly, especially in Germany: The number of children from educationally disadvantaged homes has increased significantly."
The study shows that the number of children with a migrant background in Germany has risen by around 50 percent since 2002. Only just under half of them speak German at home. In this context, the school senator referred to the experiences in Hamburg: "In view of the changes in the student body, we need to devote more time and more concentration to learning basic skills such as reading, writing, listening and mathematics," he emphasized.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) announced in Berlin on Tuesday that German pupils had performed worse than ever before in last year's Pisa study. Internationally, the average performance had also fallen drastically. This is the first Pisa report since the coronavirus pandemic. No figures are available for the individual German federal states.
Sabine Boeddinghaus, education policy spokesperson for the Hamburg left-wing parliamentary group, emphasized that the study once again confirms that there is an above-average correlation between the economic wealth of the parental home and educational attainment in Germany. "Those who are rich achieve better qualifications. Although the OECD notes this injustice in general, in Germany in particular it seems to be set in stone." Boeddinghaus called for the school authorities to do more for educational equality.
Anna von Treuenfels-Frowein, FDP member of the Hamburg parliament, also criticized the school authorities. "Of course, corona-related school closures are partly to blame for the dramatically poor PISA results. But that is only half the truth." A central reason for this is the failed attempt to implement digital lessons during the corona period. "The fact that the school senator is only now initiating a digital trial with just twelve schools, almost three years after the coronavirus outbreak and the widespread failure of digital teaching in Hamburg, is downright naive."
Read also:
- Despite the poor PISA results in Germany, the SPD's school senator Ties Rabe in Hamburg believes that the causes need to be identified and addressed in a public debate.
- The PISA study revealed that the number of children with a migrant background in Germany has increased by 50% since 2002, with only around half of them speaking German at home, which Rabe sees as a challenge requiring more focus on basic skills.
- The OECD announced in Berlin that German pupils performed worse than ever before in the 2021 PISA study, with international average performance also falling dramatically, marking the first report since the coronavirus pandemic.
- Boeddinghaus, education policy spokesperson for the Hamburg left-wing parliamentary group, highlighted that the PISA study once again showed a strong correlation between the economic wealth of the parental home and educational attainment in Germany, emphasizing the need for more action to promote educational equality.
- FDP member of the Hamburg parliament, Anna von Treuenfels-Frowein, criticized the school authorities for their handling of digital lessons during the coronavirus pandemic, suggesting that this was a significant contributing factor to the poor PISA results and that more should have been done sooner.
- Germany, like many other European countries, faced learning deficits after long periods of school closures and teaching restrictions during the Coronavirus pandemic, which was reflected in the poor results in the PISA study, particularly in mathematics, reading, and science.
Source: www.stern.de
