German schools in crisis as standards plummet and reforms stall

From crisis manager to social worker: Teachers are fighting on multiple fronts while students' basic skills are being neglected.

Summer holidays are still ongoing across Germany, but they will soon be over. Schools in Hamburg will start on September 3rd, followed by Berlin, Brandenburg, and Schleswig-Holstein on the 6th. After that, students and parents in Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia will have to wake up early again.

Three clouds of problems and a turning point: It's been downhill since 2015

The problems are already here. The first alarm comes from the Education Monitor of the Institute for German Economy (IW), which will be fully published in two weeks. However, someone has already rung the bell at the media and revealed a few pieces of the great malaise, which is called: The situation at German schools has deteriorated further.

As reported by Tagesschau, Deutschlandfunk, and Welt am Sonntag, the quality of education at German schools is declining, according to the IW Education Monitor.

The study leader, Axel Plünnecke, identifies 2015 as the turning point for this trend. Since then, it has been "downhill". The first challenge mentioned is the integration of children from migrant families; the second challenge came with the COVID-19 crisis, which has led to learning gaps and motivational difficulties.

The third challenge is attributed to the influence of smartphones, which is not compatible with students' concentration skills.

The decline in numbers

First, the numbers that were released:

Compared to the previous year, the quality values have only slightly decreased; however, compared to the first Education Monitor in 2013, which was assigned a value of 100, the evaluation in central areas has significantly deteriorated.

In 2025, the values for integration and educational opportunities are 43.7 points lower, for school quality 28.2 points, and for educational poverty 26 points.

Plünnecke spoke of a "watershed" around the year 2015. Until then, the system had improved, but since then, it has been declining. Due to the high refugee numbers, many more children came to the schools than previously calculated by the ministries of culture.

Not much optimism is left for the schools that had to deal with a completely new situation in the following years from the famous, emotional prediction of the then Chancellor Angela Merkel - "We can do it" - made in 2015.

German schools in a state of emergency

How the "misery at German schools" shows up in everyday practice and the experiences of teachers and educators is illustrated by the investigative team of Welt am Sonntag, which traveled to schools in Ludwigshafen, Mannheim, Wiesbaden, or Berlin.

There, a system under constant stress is revealed: primary schools with migrant shares of 80 to 98 percent, children without sufficient German language skills, class sizes of 28 instead of 18 students, and a lack of special education teachers. Teachers report that many first-graders cannot be promoted because they lack basic language and math skills.

Many teachers feel abandoned, caught between social work, parent conflicts, and teaching. The massive problems mentioned include the extremely poor initial conditions of many children from difficult social backgrounds even before they start primary school.

It is pointed out that, long since not only in hotspots, a social dynamic is showing that leads to distance between children from migrant families of various origins and German children, which affects language competence in German and, ultimately, learning motivation. Violence on the schoolyard is also complained about. Moreover, there is a lack of staff, making it impossible to meet the challenges. Teachers have become crisis managers in a system that keeps adding new additional tasks - from inclusion to media education to democratic pedagogy - while lacking in basics. Reading, writing, arithmetic are falling behind. There are overload reports in entire school districts, and on the other hand, the withdrawal of educationally minded families. The hotspot environment is no longer a marginal phenomenon. 'Berlin is everywhere,' it says in the report, and it sounds like a key sentence. Migration, media consumption, overwhelmed parents, and lack of early childhood support are creating a mix that is risky for the future. Nationwide, almost 56,000 young people fail to graduate from school each year, and around 30 percent of first-graders already fail at the beginning of their school time. In parallel, the new black-red federal government promises investments in daycare, full-time offers, and digital education. With the Startchance program, 4,000 particularly burdened schools are to be supported. However, much is already under financial reservation. Teacher associations warn: Without smaller classes, mandatory daycare years, more trained staff, and real social work, the problem cannot be solved. While studies and reports emphasize structural deficits, Harald Martenstein sets a sharp counterpoint in his column. Using the example of Rhineland-Palatinate, where the SPD government has abolished unannounced homework checks, he describes a 'culture of stress avoidance' that hollows out the performance principle. Tests are to be replaced by 'success proofs' - students test themselves when they are 'ready'. For Martenstein, this fits into a pattern: a policy that reduces performance pressure instead of promoting skills. His accusation: A society that shies away from stress is squandering its prosperity. Thus, the debate about the future of education policy has two main strands: on the one hand, the search for solutions to the structural overload due to migration, poverty, teacher shortage, and lack of resources. On the other hand, criticism is growing, as clearly visible in Martenstein, of an educational policy climate that is suspected of lowering performance requirements instead of sharpening them, as it is considered necessary from this perspective. It becomes clear that the education system in Germany is not only facing a technical reform task, but a transformation.