Education: Prien: Germany must become a social education state

CDU Federal Vice President and Schleswig-Holstein’s Education Minister Karin Prien has called for more investment in education in view of the upcoming PISA results. “We need a new self-image,” said the politician to the German Press Agency.

“Germany must take the path from a welfare state to a social education state. We must prioritize education – across all age groups – in the federal and state budgets.” This applies to early childhood education, school education, training, further education and training, but also to basic and cutting-edge research. Germany has been tangled up in ideological debates about the school system for decades, was late in digitalization and has not managed to get enough qualified staff into its schools.

Today the new Pisa school performance study is being presented for the first time since the corona pandemic. The skills of 15-year-old young people in reading, mathematics and natural sciences are recorded. Since 2000 it has been carried out every three years.

The first comparative study caused the “Pisa shock”: German 15-year-olds performed extremely poorly, and there was also a shamefully close connection between social background and educational opportunities in the Pisa report card. The result was a heated debate about education. After that, the results in the PISA studies for Germany steadily increased, but the values ​​have been falling again since 2016.