comprehensive school

The comprehensive school is a type of school in which the differentiation between the possible educational courses ( Hauptschule , Realschule , Gymnasium ) is made within a school or different courses are offered at one and the same school. For this type of school, a distinction is made in Germany between integrated and cooperative comprehensive schools (type of school with several courses of study). The gymnasium course of education at a comprehensive school does not always include the gymnasiale upper level after the 10th grade .

Comprehensive schools in German-speaking countries

Germany

The comprehensive school in Germany is a secondary school that children can attend after elementary school at least up to the 9th or 10th grade. In several federal states it has become an alternative to the traditional three-tier school system (with Hauptschule , Realschule , Gymnasium ). The main difference to the conventional school system is that in the comprehensive school the differentiation takes place in it according to performance level, the students are not distributed to different schools. A comprehensive school also offers various degrees ( graduate high school , high school to, permission to sixth form). After the 10th grade, the comprehensive school can be followed by the upper school level , while some of the students switch to vocational training courses outside the comprehensive school.

Integrated and cooperative comprehensive schools

A distinction is made between integrated comprehensive schools (IGS) and cooperative comprehensive schools (KGS), also called additive comprehensive schools. In the integrated comprehensive school, the pupils are only divided into different courses in individual subjects according to performance and requirements. In the cooperative comprehensive school there are classes from the Hauptschule, Realschule and Gymnasial branches next to each other. Only individual subjects such as sport are taught together.

Position of the comprehensive school in the German education system

Unit school

If the comprehensive school is not established alongside the three-tier school system, but as the sole form of school at least up to the 9th grade, it is referred to as a unit school . The original idea of many school reformers in Germany, for example by Fritz Karsen in the Weimar Republic with his Karl Marx School reform project or Fritz Hoffmann at the Fritz Karsen School after the Second World War, was aimed at this. It was realized with restrictions ( special schools ) in the GDR .

"Two-way model"

In fact, however, to date only comprehensive schools have been set up in addition to the existing school forms, which has expanded the structure of the school system. In many federal states, in addition to the grammar school, the integrative secondary school has been set up, which merges the Hauptschule, Realschule and Gesamtschule and runs its own upper level for suitable students. The educational researcher Klaus Hurrelmann called this the “two-way model” of the secondary school system, which in fact represents an implementation of the comprehensive school alongside the existing grammar school. If a grammar school career is already integrated in the secondary school (Baden-Württemberg, Saarland, Schleswig-Holstein), there is a community school that gives pupils from elementary school onwards the opportunity to spend their entire school career up to the Abitur in a single school . Waldorf schools or other alternative schools are also usually comprehensive schools.

Statistics 2016/17

In the school year 2016/17, 34% of 4.1 million German students in lower secondary education attended a grammar school, 21% were secondary school students and 10% attended a secondary school. 18% of the student body attended an integrated comprehensive school, 13% types of schools with several courses of study. Most of the total number of pupils were in Bremen and Saarland, the fewest in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Bavaria. The change in the 5th grade to comprehensive schools increased, especially in Bremen, Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia.

20% of the school leavers without a secondary school certificate attended a secondary school, 13% an integrated comprehensive school, 10% a type of school with several courses and 3% a secondary school. Comprehensive schools have a high proportion of foreign students, 22% of foreign students attended an integrated comprehensive school in the 2016/2017 school year, 18% a grammar school in lower secondary level, 17% a secondary school and 11% a type of school with several courses of study.

Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein

In Austria there is currently no comprehensive school - apart from concepts for alternative schools. Only in Vienna have some comprehensive schools existed since 1972, which were set up as part of a school trial. This school trial was originally planned for ten to fifteen years, but in 1986 it was extended indefinitely. As a result, however, the few Viennese comprehensive schools have no official status (they are considered to be Hauptschulen) and could be terminated at any time. However, there is much discussion about the permanent introduction of the comprehensive school alongside the other types of school such as Hauptschule and Gymnasium, but a corresponding decision has not yet been made.

Neither in Switzerland nor in Liechtenstein there is a corresponding concept for the comprehensive school. In Switzerland, the term comprehensive school is used for the one-class school , i.e. for small schools in rural areas.

South Tyrol, Belgium (German-speaking part), Luxembourg

The Italian education system applies in South Tyrol : This differentiates between primary school (five years), first grade secondary school in middle school (three years) and second grade in high school (five years). Primary and middle schools are designed as comprehensive schools.

In Belgium ( schools in the German-speaking community ), a six-year primary school is attended from the age of five or six. Another six years are completed in a secondary school, which is a comprehensive school.

There is a differentiated school system in Luxembourg .

aims

Socio-politically, the concept of the comprehensive school, even more so as an all-day school , is intended to counteract a development in which pupils from different socialized social groups (e.g. academics, workers, etc.) become alien at an early stage (motto: “Learn with and from one another in order to learn to live together! "). Adolescents with poor performance learn with and from better-performing students - and everyone learns together to deal with people from all walks of life and to guide them if necessary ( social integration ). However, this goal has so far only been partially achieved, as the comprehensive school on the one hand competes with the multi-tier school system and on the other hand the class-specific composition of a school class depends very much on the structure of the school's catchment area (workers' housing estate, affluent suburbs, etc.). It competes with the remaining secondary schools for pupils, and with the grammar schools for the Abitur certificate despite the same legal regulations . The originally intended socio-political effect is only marginal.

One of the educational objectives of the comprehensive school is to enable as many students as possible to obtain a higher education qualification in the interests of equal opportunities . This requires a high degree of permeability in lower secondary education in order to avoid decisions that are too early. However, critics point out the often reduced level of performance. The trend towards more higher educational qualifications also exists outside of comprehensive schools.

The form of the comprehensive school, like the elementary school, requires special didactic skills on the part of the teachers; If there is no external differentiation according to performance, the lessons must be based much more on the principle of internal differentiation . On this point, the comprehensive schools set the pace for the other school types.

Some federal states have also installed school social work in many schools . This and other support in equipping comprehensive schools should help to deal with the special problems surrounding this type of school. School social workers are now also working at other types of schools.

In some places comprehensive schools are set up less for educational reasons than for local political and demographic reasons : Maintaining a common school center appears to be a cost-effective alternative to the traditional system, especially for smaller communities. The decline in the number of pupils no longer allows the distribution to several types of school in order to obtain a school offer close to home. In a cooperative (also additive) comprehensive school , the two- or three-part structure of the school system is not abolished. One hopes for synergy effects through this spatial or organizational merging. The original form of teaching (learning together) is shortened by several years.

history

Compared to that of the grammar school, the history of the comprehensive school is relatively short. The underlying idea of setting up a school for all children and young people, regardless of their origin, their abilities and inclinations and their future occupation, goes back a long way.

Early history to 1945

Demands to teach all children of the people in a single school (comprehensive school) can be traced back in Germany to the 17th century. In his work Great Didactics , Johann Amos Comenius , in contrast to contemporary demands to set up various elementary schools - farmers', community and scholarly schools - advocated a uniform school system structured in levels. The starting point of his pedagogical considerations was the equality of all people before God.

The Prussian head of the Section for Culture and Education, Wilhelm von Humboldt , presented the first detailed concept for a school without external differentiation in 1809 , without using the term comprehensive school. The humanistic grammar school that he de facto stimulated was, however, reversed from a social point of view. There were also middle schools that led to higher degrees alongside or after elementary school .

After the First World War , the school system was established by the Weimar Constitution of 1919 and 1920 with the Reich Primary School Act:

"The elementary school is to be set up in the four lowest grades as the elementary school common to all, on which the middle and higher education is also based."

Separate preschools had to be closed until 1925; before that, wealthy parents could have their children taught at home or in a three-year pre-school preparatory to grammar school. In Austria there is still compulsory education , but not compulsory schooling .

The Karl Marx School (Berlin-Neukölln) is one of the best-known reform school projects in Berlin during the Weimar period. It was initiated by the reform pedagogue Fritz Karsen , who was director of the Neukölln Kaiser-Friedrich-Realgymnasium from 1921 . In 1923 he added courses for high school graduates to this, which made it possible to make up for the high school diploma on the second educational path. In 1927 he added an eight-grade elementary school to the school . In 1929/30 this attempt at a unified school , which had the characteristics of today's comprehensive school, was renamed the Karl Marx School . The expansion of the school and its internal school organization achieved in the early 1930s justifies speaking of the Karl Marx School as the first state integrated comprehensive school in Germany.

The Odenwaldschule , Heppenheim, was an integrated and the oldest comprehensive school (founded in 1910). One of the first comprehensive schools in Germany was the Waldorf School in Stuttgart (founded in 1919).

After 1945

In 1947, on an American initiative , the Allied Control Council decreed the German occupation zones in Control Council Directive 54 with the intention of a comprehensive school system. Allied education experts thought it was too early to distribute children to different types of schools after just four years of primary school. They saw this as one of the reasons for the susceptibility of Germans to the racist Nazi ideology, because the structured school system triggered a feeling of superiority in a small group and a feeling of inferiority in the majority of students. However, the German educational policy-makers succeeded in getting closer to the Weimar school tradition by delaying implementation.

In the educational system of the GDR on the other hand was comprehensive school as in all Eastern Bloc countries enforced by the SED for uniform education for so-called socialist man was used. It ranged from elementary school (lower level) to 8th grade or, from 1984 at the latest, to 10th grade in the polytechnic high school (POS). The extended secondary school (EOS), which only led 10 percent of the students to the Abitur in four or two years, only joined from the 9th grade or from the 11th grade.

In Hesse , the cooperative comprehensive school Kirchhain , founded in 1955, bore the name for the first time. The West Berlin School Senator Carl-Heinz Evers (SPD) coined the term comprehensive school in 1963 to distinguish it from the socialist unified school in the GDR .

The criticism of the structured school system in the Federal Republic and positive experiences with foreign school reforms, especially in England and Sweden , led to the resumption of the discussion around 1965. At the same time, the focus was on the school systems in the USA , the Soviet Union and the GDR . Not only a change in the structure of the school system, but also the teaching principles , the teaching methods and the training objectives and content were required. The reform requests were aimed on the one hand at more modernization and on the other hand at more social justice . The aim was to integrate disadvantaged groups rather than segregate them.

In 1969, the German Education Council demanded the establishment of school trials with comprehensive schools in order to be able to base the upcoming socio-political decisions on structural changes in the school on scientifically monitored and controlled trials. In West Germany and West Berlin , state comprehensive schools were established as early as 1968 ( Walter-Gropius-Schule ) in Berlin-Gropiusstadt and in 1969 in Kierspe in the Sauerland, as well as in most federal states since the 1970s.

CDU poster for the NRW referendum

In the beginning, the decision of the Education Council was supported by CDU politicians, but in the following years there was a "school fight" between CDU and SPD . This had to do with the simultaneous power shift in the federal and state governments in favor of the SPD. In the 1970s, this party made comprehensive schools the centerpiece of school reform in its policy. As a result, the comprehensive school expanded, which met with rejection in high schools and - not only conservative - politicians.

A high point of this conflict was in 1978 the attempt by the SPD / FDP state government in North Rhine-Westphalia to introduce the cooperative comprehensive school across the board. The opposition CDU, the majority of teachers 'and parents' associations and the churches organized large rallies and leaflet campaigns. The initiative "Stop the school chaos" was formed, which from February 16 to March 1, 1978 collected more than 3.6 million signatures against the cooperative comprehensive school and thus far exceeded the 20 percent threshold required for a referendum. The new school law was prevented. Just a few months later, the SPD won an absolute majority in the state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia in 1980 .

In 1972, the KMK planned to decide after ten years of experimentation whether the comprehensive school was the better concept: In the positive case, it should be introduced as the only type of school. However, the evaluation remained controversial. In 1982 the comprehensive school trial ended . Depending on the party-political orientation of the government of the individual federal states, these attempts were either regarded as successful or declared to have failed (study by Helmut Fend ).

Three examples: Berlin expanded the comprehensive school into a regular school , Bavaria dissolved almost all comprehensive schools by 1993, but has since continued to operate them as “schools of a special kind” with the same concept. A mixed school landscape developed in North Rhine-Westphalia in which a multi-tier system exists alongside many comprehensive schools.

On 28 May 1982, agreed Kultusministerkonferenz the framework agreement for the mutual recognition of diplomas of integrated comprehensive schools , d. This means that comprehensive school qualifications are also recognized in federal states that have not continued the comprehensive school model (e.g. Bavaria). This also applies to the Abitur at comprehensive schools. The federal states that reject this type of school feared that the levels applicable to the tripartite system could be undermined. According to the KMK agreement, learning objectives and learning content must meet the respective requirements of the school system, which is structured according to type of school. Comprehensive schools are therefore forced to set up different level groups from the 7th grade onwards with a differentiation in performance in the subjects German, English and mathematics, which together with the second foreign language make up a good half of the teaching time. The original comprehensive school idea was hardly recognizable.

After 1990

New comprehensive school discussions sparked German reunification at the beginning of the 1990s : while West German comprehensive school supporters hoped to convert the existing uniform schools of the GDR into comprehensive schools, parts of the East German population demanded the tripartite school system. The GDR's unified school had not achieved unanimous approval there. Only in Brandenburg, as a result of the state partnership with the SPD-ruled North Rhine-Westphalia, was there a quantitatively significant introduction of the comprehensive school. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990, Saxony and Thuringia introduced a two-tier school system in which secondary and secondary schools were merged to form a middle school and a regular school . Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania also did this later under the name Regional School , Brandenburg under the name Oberschule .

Federal states with partially integrative comprehensive schools in 2010 (without secondary school branch)

In Saarland , the secondary school was abolished as the first West German federal state with the introduction of the extended secondary school; in 2012 the community school was introduced. Rhineland-Palatinate established the regional schools as early as 1997 . These were converted from the school year 2009/10 and the remaining secondary schools and secondary schools were merged to form Realschule plus . Hamburg, too, introduced a two-tier system (the so-called two-pillar model ) with district schools instead of secondary schools and secondary schools in 2009 , which also included the existing comprehensive schools. However, the three traditional degrees and independent grammar schools remain. By contrast, on August 1, 2000, Bavaria, after testing the method, abolished the common teaching of secondary and secondary school students in the 5th and 6th grades that had been common for decades. The so-called “Mittelschule” is currently being introduced in Bavaria and the so-called “Verbundschule” in North Rhine-Westphalia, combining the secondary and secondary schools.

In Berlin, Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania there is also a comprehensive school-like orientation level in grades 5 and 6 , in which the children are taught together. Exceptions for the establishment of 5th grade in grammar schools are rare. Lower Saxony, on the other hand, abolished the common orientation level introduced in 1973 on August 1, 2004 under Minister of Education Busemann (CDU) after Prime Minister Sigmar Gabriel (SPD) had criticized the orientation level; Bremen followed under the grand coalition in 2005.

Comprehensive schools in the school system

Student body

The student body of many comprehensive schools does not reflect the entire range of performance of a year, because some of the higher-performing children first switch to grammar schools after the 4th or 6th grade. On the one hand, the Max Planck Institute for Human Development came to the conclusion that performance at comprehensive schools is significantly worse than at grammar schools, which is to be expected with average values as long as the grammar schools work with a selected group of students. On the other hand, around 70% of the successful high school graduates at comprehensive schools had no recommendation for a high school (NRW; figures from 2009), so they did better than forecast. For example, at the Berger Feld comprehensive school in Gelsenkirchen , many have made school advancement against the forecast since 1969.

Comprehensive schools are mostly attended by students with recommendations for secondary or secondary schools. The inclusion of disabled students has also become increasingly relevant, especially since comprehensive schools, unlike grammar schools, are not allowed to reject them. The schools generally reflect the population structure of the catchment area (including the proportion of students with a migration background ).

According to some reports, this does not apply to all comprehensive schools. For example, the popular Helene Lange School (Wiesbaden) can choose children who are recommended for high school and who do not have a migrant background. The education researcher Frank-Olaf Radtke also reports that school disadvantages children with a migration background by keeping the proportion of children with a migration background as low as possible. The school is pursuing a "creaming strategy". “Loosely translated that means: She picks out the raisins. When places are tight, students are selected with whom one expects to be able to work successfully in competition with high schools. " There is a lack of empirical data on this.

Debates about student performance

The discussion on how productive the comprehensive school is when the PISA study values 2000/2003 for German comprehensive schools were significantly worse than for secondary schools, for example. Some scientists attributed this to the composition of the students, because the more capable students would switch to secondary schools and grammar schools (the above-mentioned “creaming effect”). In addition, comprehensive schools - in contrast to secondary schools and grammar schools - cannot complete school.

In fact, students who transfer to grammar school have a higher average intelligence from the start than their peers who transfer to comprehensive school. Furthermore, it was possible to measure that an intelligence difference, although it did not yet exist between total students and secondary school students in the seventh grade, exists in the tenth grade in favor of the secondary school students. This is probably due to the fact that low-performing secondary school students change school type more frequently than low-performing general school students. It would therefore be unrealistic to expect similar measured values and performance from the average of the total school students as the average of the secondary school students or high school students. It is worrying, however, that overall school students acquire even fewer competencies than would be expected based on their intelligence (as found, for example, in the BIJU study). The comprehensive school does not fully utilize the cognitive potential of its students. Given the results in comprehensive schools in other countries such as Finland, there is a clear deficit.

It is occasionally countered that the best PISA scores were also achieved at some German comprehensive schools (such as the Helene-Lange School (Wiesbaden) ) or at the Bielefeld laboratory school ; However, the Max Planck Institute for Human Development has contradicted this representation. Conversely, there are controversial (see discussion below) studies that certify that German comprehensive schools provide better support for weak students than in the structured system. In the comprehensive schools, since PISA, more thought has been given to efficient and sustainable teaching, especially since many federal states are moving to the central high school diploma, which checks all students with the same tasks. The first results of the central high school diploma in North Rhine-Westphalia for the school year 2009 show that overall school students performed worse than high school students in the central exams. For example, high school students achieved 8.8 points in the mathematics test, overall school students 5.7 points and students from advanced training colleges achieved 4.6 points. The grammar school students thus improved slightly compared to their previous grading by the school, whereas the total schoolchildren and students of further education colleges deteriorated. However, as the results in the central exams only make up a smaller part of the Abitur grade, the grades of overall school students and high school students hardly differed.

The nationwide introduction of the national educational standards for the intermediate degree in the subjects German, English and mathematics as well as the natural sciences in 2004 and 2005 and the comparative tests , which are the same in all school types, should increase performance. The comprehensive schools now have to constantly compare themselves with other types of schools.

Current comprehensive school concepts

Integrated comprehensive schools (in North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony, Rhineland-Palatinate, Hesse, Thuringia, Schleswig-Holstein and Saarland) teach children from grade 5 onwards in completely heterogeneous classes, regardless of their level of ability. Starting with grade 7, differentiation courses (so-called extension and basic courses / E or G course) are usually set up in the core subjects (German, mathematics, English). The school conference decides in which further subjects (natural sciences) the courses will be set up .

At Hamburg Integrated Comprehensive Schools, until the transfer to district schools, the designation was previously I and II course (pronounced one or two -course course), whereby the I course corresponded to the performance of the grammar school, the II course the level of secondary school and secondary school . In addition, there was a so-called lift course with the designation I.II (pronounced one-two ) with the function of enabling higher - performing II-course students to transition to the high school level of the I-course. Since 2011 the grading with G and E grades has been adjusted.

Some comprehensive schools have also introduced a profile from year 9 onwards. Organizationally, they form new classes according to the number of e-courses that the young people have taken at the time. Talents and existing friendships are also taken into account.

In order to ensure that the pupils have fixed reference persons, some comprehensive schools practice the team small group model , in which a fixed core of teachers accompanies a single class over several years. A similar model is the renaming of the original class teachers after the introduction of the course differentiation in class 7 in tutors who take a tutorial lesson ( TUT , usually the last lesson of the day) or organization time ( OZ , around noon) within the scope of the original classes once a day manage, with mostly handouts and notices from the school management, school conference or parent representatives or the in-house school newspaper being distributed.

With these conceptual extensions of the original comprehensive school idea, the German comprehensive schools are reacting to the changing labor market situation and the new living conditions of young people. More all-day support is offered, namely in learning groups that make internal differentiation even more promising. From grade 9 onwards, there are so great differences in performance in practice that a meaningful internal differentiation can hardly be planned. However, there are no empirical studies. Only here does the comprehensive school separate the young people - as in the schools in most neighboring countries.

Controversies over the social effects

Opinions about the comprehensive school differ widely. Therefore the comprehensive school is also widespread differently in the individual federal states, with their different political majorities and traditions.

Proponents emphasize that the - socially and educationally - weaker students should be given special support and that they should therefore study together with the strong students for as long as possible. This also has positive repercussions on the strong students and ultimately on society as a whole. Comprehensive schools increase the students' social skills more than other types of school. This view is mainly represented by the political left (SPD, Greens, Die Linke) and apparently also dominates among educationalists. Craft associations such as the Central Association of German Crafts and the West German Chamber of Crafts , around 2002, called for a nine-year basic school for everyone.
Proponents of the comprehensive school criticize the multi-tier school system because it is concerned that it no longer teaches the lower-performing main school students the skills necessary for a successful career. In addition, it is feared that there will be insufficient support for intelligence because it has been shown that, when the output performance is checked in the intelligence test, high school students could increase their intelligence far more than students who attended another type of school. Thus, the pupils in the non-grammar school types would have poorer development opportunities.
Total school opponents are of the opinion that learning together does not do justice to the differently gifted students: the bad ones are overburdened, the good ones under-challenged, the bad ones "pull" the good ones down.
For opponents, the size of many comprehensive schools (five or six classes next to each other) is disadvantageous, which is inevitable because of the more complicated course system.

The PISA studies show differentiated results for comprehensive schools: Hong Kong , which has achieved the top spot in mathematics, has a three-tier school system. In Great Britain there are almost all comprehensive schools, but there is also a well-developed private school system . In contrast, in the Scandinavian countries all pupils attend the same type of school. If one takes a closer look at the school landscapes of the countries with unified school systems, however, it is noticeable that the term “comprehensive school” also includes very different schools. In Finland z. B. Each school has to design its own school profile according to local needs. Courses for gifted students are offered from grade 3. In this way schools are created that differ so much in terms of performance that some are comparable to German secondary schools, others more to German grammar schools. Due to the free choice of schools, the streams of pupils are sorted in such a way that significantly more homogeneous classes emerge than the term comprehensive school implies.

The hope was associated with comprehensive school that education there would be less dependent on social origin. When analyzing the PISA results , it became apparent that test performance at the comprehensive school depends most on social origin and the least at the grammar school. However, this data is likely to be a statistical artifact . The results also show that the Hauptschule is the school with the lowest support.

PISA test performance (measured in "competence points")
type of school	“Very low” social background	"Low" social background	"High" social background	"Very high" social background
secondary schools	400	429	436	450
Integrated comprehensive school	438	469	489	515
secondary school	482	504	528	526
high school	578	581	587	602
PISA 2003 - The educational level of young people in Germany - results of the 2nd international comparison .

At the same time, comprehensive schools nonetheless (to a certain extent, which is disappointing for those still in favor) of children from educationally disadvantaged strata are sending them to higher education. At comprehensive schools, for example, the trend towards a higher-quality lower secondary education (secondary school leaving certificate instead of secondary school leaving certificate) is somewhat more pronounced. Educational scientists also certify the comprehensive schools that they offer such children an important alternative to high school and the Abitur.

The proportion of those recommended to secondary school or secondary school who do the Abitur at a comprehensive school is far higher than in the grammar school. However, it must be noted that there is no comparability of the quality of the Abitur obtained at grammar schools and comprehensive schools - even under the conditions of the Central Abitur, since the majority of the average Abitur grade is not determined by the Central Abitur itself, but rather in the qualification phase in advance, where no comparative studies are carried out. The BIJU study by the Max Planck Institute for Educational Research revealed very strong performance deficits among students as a whole compared to high school students and even high school students. Differences in performance were already noticed at the beginning of class 7, which increased considerably by the end of class 10. In this class, not only the high school students, but also the high school students hurried away from the total students. It is very doubtful that these backlogs of the overall school students will be made up by the Abitur. Since the introduction of the central high school diploma in North Rhine-Westphalia, there have been noticeable differences in performance between overall students and high school students. While many high school students improve their previous grades in the Central Abitur, many overall school students get worse. In the first round of the central high school diploma in North Rhine-Westphalia, the total students reached z. B. in the self-selected advanced courses in mathematics only an average score of 4.5 (grade sufficient -). For high school students, however, the average of points in the same subject in the advanced courses was 8.1 points. In addition, overall school students with a high school diploma also fail disproportionately often in their studies compared to those who obtained the high school diploma.

The long-term study LIFE (life courses from late childhood to early adulthood) by the educationalist Helmut Fend has shown that comprehensive schools can reduce social selectivity. Nonetheless, workers ' children who have attended a Hessian comprehensive school have no better career opportunities than workers' children in the structured school system, because the later family influence has an effect: “As long as the school can act internally, i.e. the children and young people can come together and group them according to performance they definitely reduce social selectivity. When it comes to the further educational levels, to the risky decisions regarding the school leaving certificate, the training and the professional career, then this school influence is lost and the family resources in shaping the decisions come to the fore. ”These findings confirm the sociological one Research on the elite ( Pierre Bourdieu , Michael Hartmann ).

literature

Jürgen Diederich, Heinz-Elmar Tenorth : Theory of the school, a study book on history, functions and design. Berlin 1997.
Manfred Bönsch: The comprehensive school. The school of the future with a historical background. Hohengehren 2006.
Helmut Fend : Comprehensive Schools in Comparison: Balance of the Results of the Comprehensive School Trial , Beltz 1982 ISBN 9783407541260

Hans-Georg Herrlitz , Dieter Weiland, Klaus Winkel (eds.): The comprehensive school. History, international comparisons, educational concepts and political perspectives . Basic pedagogy texts. Weinheim 2003.

Gudrun Schulz-Wensky: Cooperation in the teaching team. Psychological investigation of teacher groups in the team-small group model. Dissertation Cologne 1994.

Web links

Commons : Comprehensive schools - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Wiktionary: comprehensive school - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Non-profit organization comprehensive school (comprehensive school supporter)

Working group comprehensive school e. V. (comprehensive school critic)

Working Group on the School Form Debate e. V. (critic of longer learning together)

Comprehensive schools are not fairer sueddeutsche.de (January 3, 2008)

Description of the school systems of all countries in Europe. (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; accessed on June 16, 2020 . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.eurydice.org

Individual evidence

^ Fritz Hoffmann - School reformer

^ Klaus Hurrelmann: The school system in Germany: The two-way model prevails. In: Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, 59, 4. 2013, pp. 455–468 , accessed on September 1, 2019 .

↑ Comprehensive schools have to reject students. March 5, 2019, accessed August 31, 2019 .

↑ Federal Statistical Office: Pupils by type of school in lower secondary level I. In: Schools at a glance. 2018, pp. 12, 27, 35 , accessed on August 31, 2019 .

↑ Foreign students. In: Schools at a glance. 2018, p. 19 , accessed on August 29, 2019 .

↑ Weimar Constitution of 1919

^ Reich Primary School Act of April 28, 1920

↑ Control Council Directive No. 54: Basic principles for the democratization of the education system in Germany ( Memento of May 31, 2005 in the Internet Archive ), 1947 (PDF; 14.7 kB)

↑ Recommendation of the German Education Council of January 31, 1969

^ History of the Walter Gropius School Berlin ( Memento from April 4, 2017 in the Internet Archive )

↑ History of the Municipal Comprehensive School Kierspe (GSKI)

↑ General-Anzeiger Bonn, July 21, 2006 ( Memento of September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive )

^ The comprehensive schools in Bavaria. Bavarian Ministry of Culture, accessed on August 29, 2019 .

^ MSB: comprehensive school. Accessed August 31, 2019 .

^ Oskar Anweiler and others: Education policy in Germany 1945-1990 . bpb, Bonn 1992, ISBN 3-89331-137-8 , pp. 157-169 .

↑ Benjamin Edelstein u. a .: School history after 1945. bpb, January 1, 2017, accessed on August 29, 2019 .

↑ Authority for Schools and Vocational Training: School Development Plan (draft bill). 2019, p. 4 , accessed on August 29, 2019 .

↑ Law to improve the quality of education and to secure school locations from July 2, 2003

↑ Neue Presse from December 15, 2001

↑ Christopher Onkelbach: A way out of the educational crisis ? Comprehensive school as a model for success. April 29, 2019, accessed on September 2, 2019 (German).

↑ Students with a migration background are lagging behind. WAZ, March 19, 2018, accessed August 31, 2019 .

↑ Ewald Hetrodt, Wiesbaden: Helene-Lange School: Tools for Education citizens . ISSN 0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed September 1, 2019]).

↑ Wiesbadener Kurier of August 21, 2007: “Can't take everyone in” - Scientists accuse comprehensive schools of “institutional discrimination”

^ ^A ^b Manfred Tücke: Psychology in school - psychology for school. LIT Verlag, 2005; P. 126

^ Opinion of November 26, 2002

↑ High- performance comprehensive schools in volume 57/2007 of the Blue Series of the Gemeinnützige Gesellschaft Gesamtschule e. V. ( Memento from July 5, 2007 in the Internet Archive )

↑ District government Düsseldorf: Report on the results of the queries on the Central Abitur in Mathematics 2009

^ School Ministry of North Rhine-Westphalia: Guidelines for comprehensive schools. January 2017, accessed August 30, 2019 .

↑ Allocation of grades: In addition, the grades in all subjects, not just the course-differentiated ones, are differentiated into A and B, where B stands for the high school level, A for the main and real level, which results in a descending series from B1 to A6; B4 is identical to grade A1. In practice, the grade A1 is rarely awarded and the grade B4 is also awarded to students of the II courses, while performance worse than B4 is assessed with A grades in all three courses. A rather unofficial differentiation was the evaluation of the performance according to the grades A2 and A3 as real, the grade A4 as secondary school, and the grades A5 and A6 as below secondary school level. At the end of a semester, the A and B grades achieved by a student were then used as the basis for a possible upgrade or downgrade within the course system. At the end of grades 9 and 10, a decision was made based on the A and B grades about the granting of a secondary school certificate or access to the upper level.

^ New grades at district schools. Die Welt, June 30, 2011, accessed on August 31, 2019 .

↑ Baden-Württembergischer Handwerkstag: Educational Reform: Consequences from Pisa of August 1, 2002

↑ PISA brings bad news from the secondary school for crafts. In: www.handwerk-bw.de. Craft in Baden-Württemberg, archived from the original on February 16, 2009 ; Retrieved March 1, 2008 .

↑ Elsbeth Stern and Ilonca Hardy (2004): Differential Psychology of Learning in School and Training. In: Birbaumer et al .: Encyclopedia of Psychology - Subject Area C: Theory and Research - Series VIII: Differential Psychology and Personality Research - Volume 5 Theories and Fields of Application. Hogrefe Verlag: ISBN 3-8017-0534-X , p. 580

↑ Georg Blume: Germany makes stupid TAZ from December 6, 2004 was also available online on March 30, 2008

↑ Georg Blume: Unhappy at one point: Hong Kong TAZ of December 9, 2004 was also available online on March 30, 2008

↑ Thelma von Freymann: On the internal structure of the Finnish school system , in: Freedom of Science, 2/2002, June 2002 (PDF; 59 kB)

↑ Ehmke et al., 2004, In: PISA-Konsortium Deutschland (Ed.): PISA 2003 - The educational level of young people in Germany - results of the 2nd international comparison, Münster / New York: Waxmann, p. 245

↑ Ehmke et al., 2004, In: PISA-Konsortium Deutschland (Ed.): PISA 2003 - The educational level of young people in Germany - results of the 2nd international comparison, Münster / New York: Waxmann, p. 244

^ Olaf Köller: Comprehensive school - expansion instead of alternative. In: Cortina, KS; J. Baumert; A. Leschinsky; KU Mayer; L. Trommer (Ed.): The education system in the Federal Republic of Germany. Structures and developments at a glance. Reinbek near Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2003; Pp. 458-486.

↑ BIJU study by the Max Planck Society ( Memento from September 29, 2011 in the Internet Archive )

↑ Comprehensive school is even worse than its reputation , Welt-Online-Article from October 5, 1999 with reference to the BIJU study by the Max Planck Institute for Human Development

^ Parents' Association North Rhine-Westphalia e. V .: Comprehensive school without make-up - alarm! Scientific studies of integrated comprehensive schools at a glance. Statement on the comprehensive school of the Parents' Association NRW, February 2000

↑ Ministry for Schools and Further Education North Rhine-Westphalia: Central Abitur at grammar schools and comprehensive schools - results 2010 ( Memento from September 11, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 206 kB)

↑ Ulrich Heublein, Christopher Hutzsch, Jochen Schreiber, Dieter Sommer, Georg Visit: Causes of drop-out in Bachelor and conventional degree programs - results of a nationwide survey of exmatriculated students in the 2007/08 academic year , HIS project report, December 2009; Page 66 (PDF; 5.6 MB)

↑ Helmut Fend: The origin decides the success , zeit.de of January 3, 2008 (accessed on May 22, 2009)

↑ Jochen Leffers: Comprehensive school without consequences, education is inherited. Spiegel online, January 3, 2008, accessed August 31, 2019 .