Interest in private schools is growing in Germany, where every 11th schoolchild attends one.
And this despite the fact, notes Deutsche Welle, that the demographic situation has only worsened in recent years. About six percent of all foreign students and about 10 percent of all German students attend private schools.
Is there budget money in private schools?
Every eleventh schoolchild in Germany is a private school student. And here it is important to clarify what is meant by "private" in Germany. Private schools have non-state founders. These can be individuals as well as organizations, associations, and the church. However, private schools in Germany generally have a public-law status and, like state schools, receive partial funding from the state budget.
Of the six billion euros that private schools receive, just over 1.5 percent comes from the federal treasury, and almost 70 percent (more than 4 billion euros) comes from the state treasury. Private funds account for about a quarter. Therefore, private schools in Germany are mostly educational institutions backed either by the church (according to FAZ, more than a third of general education private schools in Germany are Catholic, another quarter are Evangelical) or by a specific concept, such as Waldorf schools. In 2018, all private schools (general education and vocational) accounted for 14 percent of all schools in Germany.
How many students per class?
Another interesting comparison: what are the average costs per student at private and state schools? According to current statistics, a private school invests 8,200 euros per year per student. A state school averages 7,100 euros. Admittedly, the gap is small.
An important indicator: what is the average class size? In a private primary school, there are 19 students per class. In a neighboring state school, 21. In gymnasiums, the difference narrows: 25 in private, 26 in state. That is, on average, across all school types, private schools in Germany have one fewer student per class than state institutions. There are more girls than boys in private schools, and fewer foreigners than in state schools, as seen in the statistical handbook.
Despite the increasing number of private schools in Germany, they are criticized for contributing to social stratification. "It has noticeably increased over the past 20 years," says Katja Spiess, a researcher at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW). Institute analysts concluded that private schools are becoming increasingly popular among the German population, but access to them increasingly depends on family income. This is especially noticeable in the east of the country.
But not only children of wealthy parents attend private schools in Germany. According to DIW, in 2015, in the former East German states, every fifth child from families with the highest income attended a private school, while about eight percent of children from families with the lowest income were private school students.
Private school: a question of price and quality
So how much does it cost to attend a German private school? The most expensive are considered to be private schools in Switzerland. The German publication FAZ gives several examples. One of the most famous is located on Lake Geneva. Tuition per year costs over 100,000 euros.
For comparison: at Eton College, one of the most prestigious private schools in the UK, a year costs about 46,000 euros.
Now back to Germany: near Lake Constance in southern Germany is the Schule Schloss Salem. Tuition at this private school is about 43,000 euros per year. But this is a boarding school. On average, as FAZ writes, a year at a private school in Germany costs about 2,032 euros. But this is indeed an average figure, which includes the cost of tuition at both boarding schools and so-called "international schools."
If we take the example of a private school in Bonn, founded by the Jesuit Order, education there is free. "The school suggests making a donation or a voluntary contribution," says the father of a student at such a gymnasium. "Currently, it's 80 euros per month. De facto, all parents pay. At a neighboring private school, such a contribution is 140 euros. But the school cannot force this payment. If a family cannot afford it, they don't pay."
Expenses for educational materials, which parents pay for themselves, amount to about 200 euros per month. So, for this family, tuition at such a school costs about 1,200 euros per year per child.
According to the Federal Statistical Office, the "success rate" of private and state schools is almost the same. The indicator used was the proportion of students who received a school-leaving certificate. In private gymnasiums, it is on average only 1.7 percent higher than in state schools. The fact that the quality of education in state gymnasiums is not much inferior, and in some ways superior, is confirmed by a number of other studies.