This year's graduates may be left without school diplomas
The topic of the school-leaving certificate is quite painful as it is. As "Russkaya Germaniya" notes, the country has long been discussing the unfairness of different requirements for high school students in different federal states, widely varying levels of preparation, and the need to bring grades in diplomas to a common denominator. After all, they determine the possibility of admission to many faculties of a considerable number of German universities and, ultimately, the future of the applicant.
No concrete agreements were reached, except for potential intentions to make the exam material uniform across the country, which in itself is an impossible task with sixteen – one for each state – ministries of education, different school curricula, and different exam dates. This year, discussions about fairness have taken a back seat: the fundamental question is whether it will be possible at all to finish the school year, hold exams within any timeframe, and issue school-leaving certificates to teenagers.
Currently, spring break coinciding with the Easter holidays is beginning or already underway in all German states. Before that, students received additional free time: school attendance was banned – at different speeds in different states, but ultimately across the entire country. Classes continued remotely, largely focused on independent work. High school students facing final exams were less affected: in some places in spring, in others already from the end of winter, final-year students stop attending in-person classes and go into independent preparation.
Today, exam dates have been postponed due to the coronavirus in almost all states. For example, in Berlin, exams for the secondary school leaving certificate were scheduled to begin at the end of April but have been postponed indefinitely. Gymnasium exams for the Abitur, which allows university admission, were supposed to start at the end of March. Their holding is now impossible, although initially, when the scale of the pandemic was not so alarming, it was assumed that exams for capital city gymnasium students would be organized on time – with a distance of at least one and a half meters maintained between all participants.
In Bavaria, which was the first among all federal states to introduce a state of emergency, written exams have been postponed to the end of May, and oral exams to the second half of June. In North Rhine-Westphalia, exams have been postponed by three weeks and are to begin on May 12. Local representatives of school initiatives assumed that final tests in the most populous state of Germany might not take place at all, but Education Minister Yvonne Gebauer insists that by June 27 all 88,000 local gymnasium students must receive their diplomas: "There is no fairer system than a combination of grades from the last two years and those obtained in final exams." In Lower Saxony, exams have also been postponed to May 11.
In Hamburg, two gymnasium seniors posted an online petition addressed to Chancellor Angela Merkel, the First Mayor of the Hanseatic city Peter Tschentscher, and education officials. It called for the cancellation of final exams nationwide this year due to the pandemic and the issuance of diplomas based on academic results from recent years. From the petitioners' point of view, amid the spread of the coronavirus, holding final exams (which about 350,000 students across the country are supposed to take) "is currently impossible due to medical, psychological, and social problems." The petition found significant support, garnering over 20,000 signatures in a few days.
Such a possibility has already been considered in a number of states: it was assumed that in some places exams would indeed be canceled, and final grades would be determined solely by the results of the last two years of study without the final tests. The standard system for calculating points in the diploma involves a combination: final exam grades account for one third, and grades from two years of study account for two thirds. Theoretically, deriving final scores without exams would help those students who studied diligently for two years but fear exam stress, and would dash the hopes of slackers who were counting on shining in the finals.
As of now, the situation is as follows: participants in the March 25 telephone conference of education ministers from Germany's 16 federal states managed to agree that the 2019-2020 school year will be concluded with final exams. Obviously, the education ministers' agreement assumes that quarantine measures related to the pandemic will be eased over the two spring months. At the same time, Lower Saxony's Education Minister Grant-Hendrik Tonne believes that issuing school diplomas by the end of June is the only way to finish the school year in a normal mode.
The deadline for submitting applications for university enrollment expires on July 15, and if gymnasium students cannot take their exams by then, it means diplomas will still have to be issued based on average grades without final exams.