German schoolchildren have finally become better at reading
About 5,000 students from 223 schools in Germany took part in the PISA test. In 2000, the results shocked Germany, revealing that almost 20% of German fifteen-year-olds read and counted at the level of elementary school students. Now the indicators have improved significantly.
In reading and reading comprehension, Germany occupied a solid middle among participating countries, as well as in exact and natural sciences. German schoolchildren scored 513 points on the test (in 2000, 490 points). However, they are still very far from the winner, China with 600 points.
China, South Korea, Singapore, Finland, and Canada became winners in almost all areas of the test. Students from these countries surpass their German peers in knowledge by 1–2 years.
But students from Germany also significantly improved their results. For example, the gap between strong and weak readers has narrowed considerably. Differences between children from German families and migrant families have also become less noticeable. Our young compatriots born in Russia and other former USSR countries were especially pleasing. Compared to 2000, these children showed excellent results in reading. For schoolchildren born in Poland, the situation is the opposite: their indicators are worse than those of children born in Germany to migrant families.
Much depends not only on the parents' background but also on the school environment. "Nowhere in the world does the location of a school have such a strong influence on student performance as in Germany," says Heino von Mayer, head of the Berlin OECD center. The results of two students from the same social background but attending schools in a "bad" and a "good" district differ by almost 100 points. This corresponds to almost two years of schooling.
For Germany to finally take a leading position in education, much needs to change in modern schools. "The PISA results don't tell us what to do, but they point out where the problem lies," says Education Minister Annette Schavan. In her opinion, it is necessary not only to attract the best teachers to schools, as is done in Finland, but also to fundamentally change the entire preschool education system. Preschool education, language tests, various educational programs in kindergartens – these are one of the paths for further development.
However, a number of critics generally doubt the representativeness of the famous test. "The results of the study should not be overestimated, as they show only a small island in the vast space of German school life," says Heinz-Peter Meidinger, head of the German Philologists' Association. For example, the quality of foreign language lessons, musical and ethical education, and students' knowledge of history remain outside the test.
Irina Frolova.
