The Changing Roles of Schools in Germany: Focusing on Compulsory All-Day Schools

Abstract

  Germany is one of the few European countries to have maintained the traditional half-day school system. After the so-called PISA shock at the end of 2001, the German half-day school system was criticized and an all-day school policy was introduced. However, even after the introduction of the all-day school policy, only voluntary all-day schools increased rapidly. The half-day school system remains dominant in Germany.

  This study first considers the discussions that resulted from the PISA shock from two viewpoints to show why the half-day school system has been criticized in Germany. The first viewpoint is the balance between family and work, and the second pertains to how the gap in students’ educational outcomes can be closed. At the time of the PISA shock, the decline in the birth rate in Germany was the subject of serious discussion for the first time since World War II, and would go on to become a hotly debated topic in the 2002 parliamentary elections. Additionally, the low employment rate for women was recognized as a problem in the family policy area. It has increasingly been argued by the ministry of family that under the half-day school system, these problems cannot be solved. Further, according to PISA data, Germany shows one of the strongest relationships in OECD countries between students’ educational outcomes and their social and economic backgrounds. These issues have had a major impact on the discussion around keeping the half-day school system in Germany.

  In this paper, I show that these issues have led to the emergence of two patterns in all-day school policies across German federal states, one focusing on the introduction of voluntary all-day school and the other focusing on the introduction of compulsory all-day school. The majority patterns across all federal states are focusing on the introduction of voluntary all-day school, especially in the case of Berlin and the minority pattern across all federal states is focusing on the introduction of compulsory all-day school, only in the case of Bremen.

  Today the introduction of the compulsory type is beginning to attract more enthusiastic attention, even though little research or evidence on this approach exists. To understand the relationship between compulsory all-day schools and gaps in students’ educational outcomes, I emphasize in Section 1 that we first need to clarify what has and has not changed as a result of the introduction of compulsory all-day school.

  Before focusing on my case studies, I describe, in Section 2, the historical background of all-day school and show that they have historically been associated with the philosophy of “equality of educational opportunities” in Germany. I emphasized that the voluntary all-day school in elementary education in the context of the balance between family and work is the new characteristic given to allday schools after PISA shock.

  In the next section, I describe the research method of the study and present the background and characteristics of two compulsory all-day schools in Bremen. School B is located in the center of Bremen, and parents there are greatly interested in their children’s education. Immigrant children account for about 20% of all students. School H, in contrast, is located in the suburbs of Bremen, and the majority of the parents there are people who have been unemployed for a long time. Immigrant children account for about 90% of all students. Compulsory all-day school was introduced to these very different schools at around the same time in 2004 and the principals of both schools emphasize from the beginning that all-day school should be compulsory. Despite the differences between these schools, this point was common in two schools. Therefore, I have conducted fieldwork in both schools and attempted to collect data about what has and has (View PDF for the rest of the abstract)