As reported by "Russkaya Germaniya", German technical colleges received good grades in the results of the annual OECD report "Education at a Glance", in which Germany's educational institutions were compared with their counterparts from 36 other member countries of the organization.
German vocational education, as in previous years, showed a high level of competitiveness and employment among graduates of vocational schools or colleges and, according to researchers, will continue to play a key role in the post-pandemic recovery of the national economy.
"The interaction between schools and vocational educational institutions shows truly strong results," believes Andreas Schleicher, head of the OECD education department. The main drawback of technical education, according to the specialist, is still extremely low earnings compared to academic specialties.
German preschool education also earned praise from OECD experts, its level having noticeably increased in recent years – here an important indicator was the high level of specialists employed in this field. According to the study, there are on average five students per early childhood educator in Germany, while among the most developed member countries of the Organization for Cooperation this indicator stays within the range of seven.
Also important is the high level of preschoolers attending kindergartens in Germany. For example, in 2018, more than 41% of all one-year-old children were enrolled in nursery groups, while in other studied countries the average was only 34%. Among two-year-old children, these numbers were predictably higher – 67% in Germany, 56% in other developed OECD countries.
The positive results of the OECD study were praised by German Minister of Education Anja Karliczek, emphasizing the importance of training young specialists who contribute to the economic development of Germany. The Minister of Education of Rhineland-Palatinate and President of the Conference of Education Ministers, Stefanie Hubig, believes that Germany has a truly good education system, created and maintained at the highest level by generations of highly qualified teachers.
At the same time, despite visible successes, the German sphere of vocational and preschool education has recently faced a number of serious challenges, among which the demographic gap, changes in the national labor market, and the ongoing process of digitalization of the economy are particularly acute. The minister paid special attention to the need for in-person learning, which once again proved its advantages during school closures and the transition to online learning.
The latter is especially often criticized both by the Ministry of Education and by teachers themselves, pointing to the insufficient level of digitalization of German schools and kindergartens, which faced difficulties with distance learning. According to Andreas Schleicher, not every student was able to take advantage of all the benefits of distance learning; children who attended those educational institutions where the process of digitalization and re-equipment was not completed or never started suffered especially. The expert is confident that the German government should draw conclusions from the current situation, providing kindergartens, schools, and technical colleges with both equipment and support in a short time.
The first steps towards digitalization of educational institutions in Germany were taken back in spring 2019, when the German government adopted a number of constitutional amendments necessary for the implementation of a project under which the state will allocate 5 billion euros in the next five years, with another 500 million euros in direct investments provided by the budgets of the federal states. With these funds, every educational institution in the country is to be equipped with laptops and tablets, wireless internet, and whiteboards. It was also planned to expand staff and conduct a series of seminars to improve the qualifications of specialists.
Despite the successful start of the process of re-equipping German educational institutions, the program came under attack from anti-epidemic measures, and the closure of educational premises once again showed the correctness of the chosen course of the German government. Citing the results of their study, OECD specialists emphasize that it was the timely introduction of the latest technologies into the system of preschool, school, and technical education that raised its level in the world ranking, partially compensating for the consequences of abandoning in-person learning during the period of self-isolation.
The weakest link in the German education system remains its insufficient funding from the state – significantly less than in other industrialized countries. According to the OECD report for 2017 (no more recent data available), Germany spends on average 4.2% of its annual GDP on maintaining educational institutions and training teachers, although the global average is consistently at 4.9%. The statistics are smoothed by the fact that the average state expenditure per German student is on average 11,400 euros per year – despite the fact that countries at the top of the OECD ranking spend only 9,434 euros per year on these needs.
OECD experts are extremely concerned about the rise in unemployment in Germany among people with low levels of education. The organization's staff emphasize that German residents who have not completed school are at the greatest risk of losing a stable income during the period of restrictive measures, compared to Germans with academic education, as they cannot benefit from the prospects of remote work. According to last year's OECD study, about 12% of Germans with incomplete secondary education did not have permanent jobs, while among respondents aged 25 to 34 who completed vocational school or university, this figure did not exceed a margin of error of 3%. At the same time, more than 37% of all spending on vocational training in Germany is financed from private sources, making this sector extremely vulnerable amid the deepening economic crisis.