Slipping Standards

At the five-day international teachers' conference in Berlin this week, which brought together around 1,800 educators from all over the world, education experts said Germany's overregulated and under-funded schools needed a massive reform injection if they were to compete internationally.

Andreas Schleicher, a coordinator of PISA, the OECD's Program for International Student Assessment which compares educational achievement in different countries, said the training of teachers in particular needed to be radically revamped.

In Germany, there's an attempt by "teachers who have been trained in the 20th century to teach children of the 21st century in a school system that was conceived in the 19th century," Schleicher said.

He added that school teachers sorely needed a more hands-on training approach.

Germany still reeling under PISA shock

The criticism is not new. In recent years, Germany's education system has taken a severe battering after a string of PISA study results showed the country's exalted schools to be trailing internationally.

In 2001, Germany ranked only 21st in reading skills and 20th in math and science among 31 countries assessed.

In March this year, the country was dealt another blow when UN special education envoy Vernor Munoz -- amid protests by Germany's federal education ministers -- published a damning report saying the class-based three-tier school system was selective, discriminatory and undemocratic by shutting out children from immigrant and poorer backgrounds.

In no other industrialized nation was school success so strongly linked to the social origin of its students, Munoz said in the report. He urged Germany to rethink its school structure.

Whereas most other European countries have moved on to more inclusive school systems, Germany has essentially stuck to a three-tier structure which means that children are only 10 (or 12 in Berlin) when their high school is chosen.

For nearly half of foreign students, it's the Hauptschule which prepares them for low-skilled jobs. Only 14 percent go to a pre-university Gymnasium, compared with a national average of a third. The drop-out rate for children of immigrant backgrounds is three times the national average. Only at the Grundschule, or elementary school, are pupils from all ability groups taught together.

Experts urge government to wake up to reality

Though the shock caused by the international studies has triggered some reform activity in German schools, critics say it's all taking place within the existing system.

At the conference in Berlin, experts, including Munoz, said the German government has yet to react to the UN special envoy's drastic recommendations.

Marianne Demmer, head of the teachers' union, GEW, said the German government and the federal states -- which are responsible for education -- needed to finally stop reacting to Munoz's criticism "with a mixture of hurt, aggression and arrogance."

Demmer urged German president Horst Köhler to step in and ignite a national debate on Munoz's reform proposals. She also demanded that the human right to education be anchored both in Germany's Basic Law and in state constitutions.

Critics have also slammed German federal education ministers for their refusal to participate in an international PISA study for teachers. Currently, 25 countries including Denmark, Italy, Spain, Austria and Spain are participating in the survey.