German Edcution System
The German eduction system is highly differentiated with regards to the 16 Länder—at least on school level. University level is country-wide the same and thus not so difficult, even though there are several institutions for tertiary education.
School System: Primary and Secondary Education
German students begin going to elementary school at an age of 6 or 7 having spent about 3 years at an optional kindergarten before. They will learn according to study plans which have been made by the government of each Land. However, there often are mandatory topics and optional topics which the teacher can choose from.
This is very the complicated aspects begin. Each Land has its own rules on how school will go on and how students will learn further. While there are some Länder where students learn together six years other already separate them after four years. Furthermore, in some Länder the teacher’s opinion on which school a student will be allowed to visit is mandatory, in some it is only an advice.
When you are attending a new school after fourth or sixth grade, there are three different possibilites:
- Hauptschule (9 years)
- Realschule (10 years)
- Gymnasium (12 / 13 years)
Thus, the students are highly separated according to their knowledge and behaviour which in my opinion leads to an amplification of effects, meaning that the bad students will become worse for they have no contact to good students and the good students will lose sight for the not so intelligent people’s views.
Hauptschule is the lowest level of German school system and often considered very poor. Especially in cities the people there are pretty underbred not knowing German values, because already their parents—and of course also their other class mates in school—do not care about them. Different people already wanted to abolish Hauptschule in order to send all these students to Realschule, but at least in Baden-Württemberg (where I live) these attempts have been stopped by the government. After having finished Hauptschule you can go to a Werkrealschule to get the same degree you would get at Realschule.
In the past Realschule has been seen as the normal way of eduction, but I guess with increasing education and the need for university degree it has changed a bit towards people wanting their children to go to Gymnasium. However, even if you have only been on Realschule, you can always attend a non-general-education Gymnasium afterwards for three years. Moreover, there are other schools you can attend which will give you an advanced technical college entrance qualification (you cannot enter universites with this) or a general qualification for university entrance.
Gymnasium is the highest level of these three school systems and it always lasted 13 years altogether, but for younger it’s only 12 years. Of course, they have more lessons per week instead. In 10th class you will get the same degree you would get with Realschule and you might change to a non-general-education Gymnasium (e.g. an economy-specialized Gymnasium). After 12/13 years students will get the general qualification for university entrance.
Advanced Technical College (Fachhochschule) / University: Tertiary Education
Once you got the approriate degree of either advanced technical college entrance qualification or general qualification for university entrance you can enter a Fachhochschule or university. However, we do not only have normal university education here, but also academdia (I think especially in arts), so called Berufsakademie or combined studies (Duales Studium).
In Berufsakademie and combined studies you learn at university and go to a company together. Of course not at exactly the same time, but combined studies can switch between both forms of education within one week or even one day. Berufsakademie usually uses intervals of several months of theory followed by several months of internships in a company.
With regard to the distinction between Fachhochschule and university I can only say that Fachhochschule is said to be more practical while university is said to be more theoretical. Therefore, some people told me that at university you rather focus on how something works (e.g. algorithms) while Fachhochschule focuses more on how you can use it. Actually, you can not distringuish it so easily, because of course everything is part of each of the systems. Yet, I think that universities really do not have mandatory internships as often as Fachhochschule, which supports the argument that Fachhochschule is more oriented on practice.
And now everything in Graphics
Since the whole system is not really easy to understand, I will show you a good figure found on bildungsserver.de.
PS: Excuse-me for not having written so long, but being part of the German education system I had to participate in some exams on July 15th–21st.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
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