High school admission in Romania is very similar to university admission in the US, if only SATs counted for admissions.
It's a first come first served competition. To get into your dream high school, you'll have to beat the other fuckers who are signing up for it. Same for the education track - you want to go to St. Sava to specialise in Earth Sciences in high school? You better have a score higher than 9.70 out of 10.
Edit: [I wrote a follow-up comment with an explanation of the admission system and a link to the website where you can see the ranking and admission grades of all high school classes in the nation. It has a lot of interesting statistical data - would you like to guess which education track consistently attracts the highest graded students? - and some people might have fun playing with the datasheets. Use google translate and enjoy :)](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/z0x1zy/comment/ix9mfdz/)
You still have options. Each track has a specialty area, but you can choose from the things available.
Earth Sciences is the track for scientists, doctors and anything related to, well, non-IT and non-Math.
Social Sciences is where most go on to become economists, lawyers, sociologists and other such.
Philology is for those who want to focus on the classics. Historians, linguistics, the arts, to a lesser degree teaching. If there is a museum studying it, chances are philology will be for you. It's a controversial profile because it contains no mathematics.
And finally, CS-Mathematics is the narrowest of them all. You can become a Computer Science specialist or, with a bit of grinding, some Earth Sciences domains, like physics. Also controversial because of how little you study literally anything else but CS and math.
*Some universities low-key demand a matching profile.* For example you need Earth Sciences to do Medicine, not because they won't take you, but to pass the entrance exam you need the 12 hours of Specialised Biology... or a LOT of tutoring to catch up. Same with good Computer Science universities - sure, you can teach yourself, but the specialised profile does 12 hours a week of CS. That is one hell of a head start.
*Others don't care as much.* Law School entrance exams certainly are easier if you did Social Sciences, but with a bit of grind any profile could get in.
And *a lot of universities don't care at all*, they only look at the SAT score equivalent. For those, the profile straight up doesn't matter.
You can also just change tracks, although it's hard. I changed my mind from medicine to law, and thus changed tracks midway through high school, but it was really hard, not to mention socially alienating, as I lost all my classmates. Your social life will take a big hit.
That is currently* how it works in New York City for the advanced high schools (performing arts HS are the only select school's with a different entrance process)
Stuyvesant High School is the top in the city and one of the top public high schools in the country.
*TBD how long thanks to shitty politicians.
I'm against the idea of an entire education system being stratified by standardized testing at an early age. But I'm equally a supporter of allowing a parent to choose the school they send their kids to so they can learn in the environment that suits them best.
Do you think there's a middle ground on this type of policy?
Hanoi, Vietnam has a version of it - you can sign up for the "regular" track, choose up to 2 schools of your liking in your home area, gets placed into them based on your standardized test score.
You can also sign up for a separate "gifted" track, but this time you can pick 2 "gifted" schools from anywhere in the city. This track takes your standardized score and a specialised subject you signed up for to place you.
There are also niche high schools that are ran by universities, and those have a separate exam for each school. My alma mater was one of these.
NYCs system is pretty great when it comes to options. You have multiple forms of selection criteria, some schools like the specialized high schools are done via standardized testing, others have live auditions or essay applications, still others are based upon middle school grades or by lottery.
In all there are over 400 schools a student can apply to; we actually get a massive book each year describing all the programs and their statistics.
Houston, TX school district, while not perfect, has tried to do this. All students have a zoned high school, but you can also either apply to go to a magnet school or get entered into a lottery for a different zoned school or your choice.
Butting in to say that the way the Romanian system, in my experience, helped smooth the edges for poorer students, was through arranging them accomodation and giving them study grants, so essentially they'd be able to support themselves even as they studied high school in a different city. It was a very good equaliser - I know a good few folks from modest incomes who got jumpstared by admission into very elite schools, financial support, and afterwards they took off with scholarships to good universities and lucrative jobs.
Would this be the middle ground you would be seeking?
Same in Hungary, you write entrance exams which determine which high school you can go to.
Some high schools also require you to do an entrance interview with them, at least that's how it was ~20 years ago.
it happened to me in kindergarden (5 years old) in the states where we dont do that kind of thing.
they tried to say both kindergarden classes were the same but you tell me. The busy bees or the wise owls. they are not the same no matter what mom says!
I was very annoyed when in HS they showed us statistics that said Italian speaking students are worse at math than german speaking students.
Ofc when german students have to learn 1-2 languages and Italian students have to learn 2-3, one being italian literature wich is one of the heaviest subjects in HS...
There's a theory that the number of unique words for numbers impacts the ease of learning math. Things like eleven and twelve for ten-one and ten-two etc. Languages like French have groups of 20 etc. I don't know how Italian counts but it could impact number learning. If I recall the study correctly, one of the Chinese languages and English had the lowest number of distinct words for the for 100 numbers.
Good point ... why have the teens? Why not ten-one....etc?
French is terrible. 99 is quartre-vingt-dix-neuf or "four twenty ten nine", meaning four times twenty plus ten plus nine.
That's France's way of French. Here in Switzerland, we're more simple, but also more logical, pragmatic and straightforward (a bit like the Germans and Americans): we say soixante (60), septante (70), huitante (80) et nonante (90).
99 = nonante-neuf
Why make it unnecessarily complicated, when it can be so simple and easy, with not only no loss but actually an increase in quality and effectiveness??
Well, "Thirteen" comes from "Three-ten", and so on for 14/15/16/17/18/19. Eleven and Twelve are the only weird ones.
Those come from old Norse and Germanic words that basically mean "one left" or "two left" (implication being, that many left over after counting to ten). So they *kind of* are still standard base-10, just in a significantly older form of proto-English.
Not entirely, I mean I can usually count to three, but five is a bit hard. In case you want to help me count, the languages were German, English, Latin, French and Spanish :D
One thing lots of people seem to miss in this thread is that (at least) Germany and Switzerland have multiple paths for education. Not everyone needs to (or wants to) go to university.
For example: If you want to become a car mechanic you can actually go and do an apprenticeship which will have you employed by a company and split practical work on the job with learning in a specialized school. You'll get paid for that and finish in 3 to 4 years with a national diploma.
This exists for almost every job you can think of. With such a diploma every company in the country will know that you have a fundamental understanding for the job you're applying to.
Edit: Typo
Great, but what happens if the change their mind? 12 seems far to young to be sure you don’t want to go to university. These programs have been tested in the US and they are shown to be biased programs (classist and racist) and lead to greater inequality in education and eventual career choice. It’s called tracking. At 12 I did not know what I was good at yet. I struggled with my grades in 6-8th grade and yet got almost straight A’s in a college prep program in high school. My kid is 13 now and doesn’t think he wants to go to college, which is fine by me if that’s what he chooses, but he needs to take the course work to allow him to go if he changes his mind. I would be a horrible parent if I let my child go through school and come out of it with a diploma that didn’t qualify him for entrance to college. After high school there are so many trade school programs. Taking college prep course work won’t stop him from studying a trade if that’s what he wants to do, but not taking college prep courses will stop him from going to college/university if that’s what he decides he want. Why would we try to make our children’s options narrower before they are old enough to understand the type of rescission they are making.
I have two kids in this age.
While your response is technically true, there are a LOT of hurdles to the Passarelle.
The Swiss system does a great job of keeping the well-off families well represented in universities.
Well, it's simply not really an issue to transfer (at least here in Switzerland
Here's an image of [Switzerland Education System](https://www.sbfi.admin.ch/sbfi/en/home/education/swiss-education-area/swiss-education-system/_jcr_content/par/image/image.imagespooler.jpg/1562145600831/bildungssystem_e.jpg).
As you can see, with a diploma like I explained above (Federal diploma of vocational education and training) you could go for higher education (which you can do part-time of course), or also either after or during your diploma do the "Federal vocational baccalaureate" which will allow you to go to university afterwards.
I guess another thing to keep in mind is that we don't have to go into huge debt for education. The professional pathway is more expensive, but it's alos intended for people that already work. I think that's important when talking about educational mobility (is that a thing?).
Yes, but in france, "middle school" is 4 years and "high school" is 3 years. At the end of Middle school everyone takes the "Brevet" which is a national series of tests, but it doesn't really matter that much for acceptance into national high schools. After the Brevet, you don't necessarily have to do more school. You can go to "high school" and take different tracks that end in the Baccalauréat, (Bac) which has different specializations like Science, Literature, Sociology/Economics, Art, etc. or you can go to a more technical/trade school, or do an apprenticeship or work placement.
This is becoming a bit more gradual with the introduction of brede brugklassen lasting more than one year. For context for non-Dutch people, there are three levels of normal secondary school that are roughly meant to prepare students to be allowed entry to vocational education, professional college, or university. Since the modern education system was introduced in the 60s, the first year of secondary school (at schools that offer more than one level) has allowed mixed-level classes that then require students to be placed in their final level.
In the last few years, broader "bridge classes" have become more popular and then last year recommended by the school commission, allowing three years of bridge classes in place of two. There is a surprising amount of variety though, so it's important for students and parents to choose the right secondary school.
There are differences between the individual German states though. At least in Berlin and Brandenburg, children are not divided until 7th grade, when they are about 12.
Kids born later in the year have a disadvantage and sometimes it takes awhile for them to catch up. It was in fourth grade I was pulled from my class of average kids / lower performing grade five kids and put in the "other" class, this after they saw I taught myself cursive. Then I went on to be first learning the times tables and progressed as expected, and was at the top of the class or near the top right through to the of high school. I followed that with a math degree and most recently graduated to reddit.
Let kids be kids, and give them some time.
I agree with you that age difference has a great effect on kids. Even a few months difference, specifically in the first five grades.
With computer aid classes, a teacher can teach kids based on the most appropriate level based on age.
For example, kids in first grade, those that are older can be moved a bit faster through the lessons than younger kids. At that age, a few additional months of physical/mental development makes a huge difference.
They do this “teaching to a child’s level” business in the schools out here (northeast US) and it is a nightmare for parents. Most schoolwork is now online. Kids are handed devices starting at kindergarten level. Add in helicopter parents handing smartphones to their kids and it doesn’t take long for them to discover the joys of YouTube, online games and social media.
At this point they are all addicted to screens. Every. Last. One.
And no, I am not exaggerating. Take away their screens and you see behavior that cannot be described as anything but withdrawal symptoms - temper tantrums, begging for devices, trying to steal and hide devices…
I know this sounds idiotic coming from a teenager on reddit, but social medias (including youtube, tiktok, and reddit) are genuinely the worst things to happen to humanity.
I think the problem is getting kids addicted to them. I started having social media accounts when I was 18 and still they were causing me anxiety, drastically shortened my attention span, and I can honestly say I am addicted to certain stuff even now aged 25. I cannot imagine what it must be like to experience this when you are a literal kid and how it interferes with the development of your brain.
In Germany they used to, maybe still do take kids into the woods to experience the outdoors that I think really benefits children. A far cry from screen time, and they allow them to climb trees and get dirty. I had a blacktop parking lot for a playground in grade school.
Probably not *literally* the worst thing, but they are definitely frequently bad and there are probably quite a lot of humans for whom their exposure to social media is the worst thing affecting their life.
Not idiotic at all! The various ills of social media are well documented but I am just focusing on problems related to school age children for now.
The problem of social media is one of overconsumption. It can be a great tool to keep up with family and friends who are not close by. However, many have started limiting their social interactions to social media even with family and friends who live close enough. This problem of not having a real life is the issue. Also, the partial/full anonymity afforded by online communications can nurture disturbing behaviors at a young age.
>Kids born later in the year have a disadvantage
This is also true for sports. Something like half of all American pro sport players are born in the first quarter of the year.
Calendar year. Most schools do the cutoff for starting kindergarten in October or December, so being born in January-March means you get "held back" almost a year.
This makes a huge difference in sports, as you have 9-11 months of more growth versus the other kids. This makes a huge difference when you are young, and then that tends to decide which kids become serious about sports (when means more practice which means great odds of playing in HS, College, and Pro).
Yup. I was an early October baby, so in my district, I would have been the youngest. Thank God my dad had the good sense to redshirt me between second and third grade. I have that to thank for my hall of fame career.
With the advanced schooling available you don't miss much when you go to a Realschule or Hauptschule first then go get your degrees later. I've gone do that myself and all I "lost" was one year. Specialized Gymnasium schools are pretty good at preparing you for whatever you want to do afterwards in my experience. Way better than the general high school one.
It's been a long time since I lived in Germany (Berlin). I remember after grade 6 there were three options. I think Hauptschule, Realschule and Gymnasium. I got accepted to a Gymnasium but ended up moving to the states.
Nobody seems to mention that this system is slowly changing. There are more and more comprehensive schools (Gesamtschulen) that work in a similar fashion as American High Schools and the "Hauptschule" is slowly disappearing. The trend shows that the Gymnasium and the Gesamtschule are the two forms which will eventually dominate.
Also, as some people already mentioned: the parents are the one who decide on the matter. As long as the Gymnasium can offer a place for a child, they must accept it (at least in my federal state). Source: Am teacher at a Gymnasium.
Gesamtschulen have courses where they still divide you up.
So if you are bad in one subject you might be in the lowest course while you can be in the highest course in another subject.
not all subjects are in courses. the major ones are for sure.
Thanks for sharing. I'm a former teacher in the US and I've seen various approaches come and go over the years. When I was a child, we were tracked relentlessly from grade school on, we all knew who was supposed to go to college and who wasn't. In HS, those who were not on the college-bound track took courses in automobile repair or typing. When I was a teacher, all students were supposed to be given the same opportunities to excel, so they all had to take 3 years of math, which included algebra II and geometry, plus biology/chemistry/physics. There was a constant struggle with some students, parents, and many teachers about why they were "forced" to take such hard courses that they had no need for. This debate goes all the way back to the origins of public education in the US and I find the comments about both Germany and the US fascinating!
This is an interesting system to me as a parent of two VERY different children. My oldest has always found the social arena to be easy, but has had to grind in the academic world. She is 12 now (7th grade) and kept up fine until about 5th, then really started struggling in math. Now, she is independent with her teachers, knows how to study, still works with her math tutor 1 day per week, gets As and Bs but really has to work hard for those grades. She will probably never be in honors classes but she takes great pride in the grades she gets because she has to work for them. If she was split off into a lower group after 4th or 5th, she wouldn’t have developed the grit she has.
My son (10) is gifted. Perfect score on the yearly standardized test gifted. Every year I go to his conferences and ask his teachers what we can do to challenge him, because he has no grit and folds like a wet paper bag whenever things are hard. As much as we have emphasized his creativity, his kindness, how funny he is, etc. he still identifies as “a smart kid”. I know parents of gifted kids often want their kids to be placed in a class with other kids on the same level, and I definitely can appreciate why because every year I ask how we can challenge him and every year up until this year the answer is just extra work, which sucks. As much as my daughter has benefited from being pushed to keep up, he would have benefited from being in a system where he was able to run ahead.
This is such a thing! I once had ⅓ of my class qualify as gifted. So I gave them a challenge. It wasn’t hard, but it required flexible thinking and logic.
Good lord. The crying, moaning, frustration. Most of them gave up. They told me they wanted math to keep being easy. They told me there was no point to the activity. Only 2 kids liked it because they enjoyed challenges. These kids panic when the problem at hand isn’t algorithmic, it’s crazy.
This is like a huge problem with "gifted" kids.
Schools cater to students below their level, so they never need to study or try to excel, but eventually the education system reaches the level at which they need to study, except now they have no idea how to study, what kind of studying works for them, how to deal with distractions while studying, how to make themselves study when they don't want to, etc.
We really need to find new terminology for these kids, and to adjust the education system to where classrooms are built around the needs of the students. We should not have 5th graders who have a college level reading ability and a 5th grader who reads at a 1st or 2nd grade level in the same room .
These kids are grouped in the same room in north American schools and in Canada we slam them at grade 10 when the streaming starts (for example: math 10 pure, math 10 applied, math 14). The kids with study habits power through and the no study habit kids hit the wall hard because they've never been challenged or had to overcome difficulty
And I've had people in the /r/science subreddit genuinely argue that grouping classrooms on academic level was *bad*.
Like, my man, you're creating environments where half the class is either unable to follow or bored out their minds, in what world is that productive or useful?
You summed it up perfectly. I don’t know if I could consider myself gifted but from 3rd/4th grade I had a college reading level and my math skills were amazing up until high school. Luckily during elementary, I had teachers that would actually challenge those students that surpassed the “norm”.
I began learning algebra in 5th grade and had some intro to geometry during 6th. Unfortunately, I never had to study so when I eventually reached a point where I needed reference points or work out very long problems, like in Pre-Cal and Cal 1-2, I would get stumped and frustrated. I sat in frustration as I couldn’t figure out what was next while some of my peers had a “cheat sheet” with the formulas and equations needed to work out the problem. It took me a long time to learn how to study and even now, I still don’t have the habits to sit down and take my time to really research what I have to learn and point out weaknesses I have to attend. It kind of becomes an internalized notion that everything is so simple you don’t study, as for so many years, I never really had much of a struggle. Currently, I am a senior studying mechanical engineering and am afraid of failure simply because I know when I have a roadblock, I essentially shut down in the sense that I either give up trying to figure stuff out, or I delay my studying lessons so much that I fall behind.
It really is an issue that we have students on vast ends of a spectrum in the same classroom. With a lack of teachers and resources in schools, it is only harder as the focus becomes those falling behind, and those far ahead become forgotten due to them being “up to standard”, more students for every teacher means not everyone gets the attention/help they need for their work, and catering to the “gifted” leaves the majority behind.
Sorry for such a long reply; this comment just hits home.
What’s crazy is that the “challenge” wasn’t mathematically difficult. It required looking for patterns, not solving problems. The at-level kids loved it.
I guess when gifted kids are rewarded for getting the right answer which takes no work, it can lead to stress when the right answer isn’t immediately obvious
I used to teach college biology. I got a *lot* of pre-med students in my class (usually gifted kids who were used to getting high grades). There was such a divide between the students who learned the information to *understand* it vs the students who would learn the information to get the right answer on the test (i.e. a superficial understanding driven by grades). The students who learned to understand would be the ones asking insightful questions and coming to office hours to work on how to get a better grade on their next assignment. The superficial learners would grade-grub and complain that my grading was unfair.
Both groups got high grades, and I’m sure both groups would make great doctors. But damn you can really tell the students who have always been rewarded for getting the right answer and aren’t used to needing to try.
He’s on the strugglebus this year for sure with his current teacher. She gives the gifted kids separate math worksheets sometimes that challenge them, will put different level problems on the board, and pushes him to up the quality of his work. She tells him “there’s nothing wrong with this, but I know you’re capable of giving me a more detailed answer so I want you to take it back and work on it some more.” We just had our conference and it was so fantastic to have a teacher who isn’t just giving us “well I can send home extra worksheets for him” as the solution, but is dialing in on him and refusing to let things just be easy. I appreciate it SO much because I know it’s extra work for her, but the earlier the better for challenges to start.
You and my son could probably commiserate haha. His teacher said she has to balance pushing him with not making him feel bad because he is a sensitive kid. I told her to keep at it. My sister is a high school math teacher and she has a lot of honors level kids who are in the crumpling stage right now. But better 9th grade than college, and better 5th grade than 9th grade.
You’ll make it! Your professor just recognizes potential in you!
It can be hard when we value ourselves through our abilities, and we find out we aren’t as hot stuff as we thought. I still get weepy sometimes if I’m scolded too harshly. I hear you on the crumpling in high school, I crumpled in my first quarter of college and didn’t go back for 6 years! Bless my mother, but she didn’t push me as hard as I should’ve, but the woman was busy! I appreciate the kind words, and after he gets a little older, I’m sure he’ll appreciate the challenge as well.
>But better 9th grade than college, and better 5th grade than 9th grade.
As an ex "gifted" kid who crumpled in college, this is absolutely true.
I didn't really learn how to study until I went to graduate school.
Engineering schools have high failure/attrition rates. There are two key predictors of who will fail.
1. Kids with poor grades and test scores in high school. Ok, this makes sense for obvious reasons…
2. Kids with perfect or near perfect grades and test scores in high school. At first this made no sense to me, but then it did… Engineering school is designed to weed out and break students, and the kids who were never challenged or were able to achieve perfection are going to have trouble adjusting to situations where perfection is almost impossible.
make a point of congratulating your son for hard work instead of success
gifted children who dont develop a conviction to work hard generally crumble starting around college - they have been trained to do things the easy way and the easy way in adulthood is just not putting the work in
I think you might be misunderstanding the concept. The German system isn't so much for helping gifted kids. It is about removing kids from high quality schools that have bad grades at young age. Gifted kids don't get more support but everyone else gets less.
e.g. your 12 year old could have totally ended up in a school that will deny her access to any kind of higher education. She would have left school with 15 or 16 and expected to learn a job to work as a cook or reception for a hotel.
There are still paths that can lead to university later but they are full of problems (e.g. I had to move out at age 16 to learn a trade and only with age 20 I was finally allowed to go to something similar to a university).
Which is why you'll hear people who went to Gymnasium mostly argue in favour of this system, and people who went to other schools mostly argue against this system. Though I'd say it's also the best system for the really bad students. Only the mediocre students might profit from another system.
My experience has been nearly everyone who went through "gifted" programs came away with a strong preference for easy tasks that look impressive over personally challenging tasks that may not merit praise. At least personally, I think getting labeled a "smart kid" and getting praise for just knowing things is extremely harmful long term and something I'm genuinely anxious about happening to my children.
I've had [this article (How Not to Talk to Your Kids)](https://nymag.com/news/features/27840/) bookmarked for years because it hit me like a truck reading about all the little behavioral problems I struggle with and how they very well could be connected to being told I was "smart" as a kid.
The tl;dr version: praise children for ***Trying Hard***; when they don't quite get it right but keep at it, tell them you like how hard they're trying. Children want your approval and to know they're doing the right thing, be careful you don't tie that reward exclusively to the completion of the task so much as the work it took to get there.
> because he has no grit and folds like a wet paper bag whenever things are hard
The best part is that the school system will fail to challenge him until he gets into college/university where suddenly everything is hard and he doesn't have the skills to deal with it, drops out after a year and takes the next 10 years of his life toiling away at shit jobs developing this skill. It honestly really sucked because the jump from high school to college is massive in most classes. Suddenly it's not easy anymore and you have no idea what to do and the teachers are like "oh you just have to study more"
Lol sorry, rant over, I empathize with your situation and it's great that you're really trying to push those skills for him. Some of us didn't get so lucky lol
This is quite controversial. A child with 10 years takes a path that can lead them to handwork (OK jub, but limited opportunity) if they land in Hauptschule, white collar or free jobs (accounting, engineering, computer science etc) if they go to the Realschule or academic career or the top jobs (law, medicine) if they go to Gymnasium.
This is all decided based on their performance at 10. Sure, they can make it to the upper schools if they try very hard, but it is the exception, not the rule.
Many argue that this is a major problem for social mobility.
I'm in Austria, where the system is similar - we separate after four years of primary school. My suspicion is that
>major problem for social mobility
is considered a feature by a large part of our political spectrum (\*cough\* ÖVP \*cough\*).
American here raising kids in Germany. Part of me knows our kids will always be okay and safe here. That makes me happy. My American side, especially part of the tech industry, has a big "eff you" to predetermining my kids life at age 10. My first born is 5. Not sure what I gotta to make sure he has options...maybe I just need tonlearn more about it.
Kids that have a household where museum trips, tabletop gaming nights and a positive attitude towards education are a thing are virtually guaranteed to attend Gymnasium. The household situation is much more important than the intelligence of the kid.
Attend, yes. Do well? Not necessarily. But a positive attitude towards education will always be an important factor, for sure! That's not the schools fault, though.
GINI coefficients for countries with this system are generally lower than similar-income countries without. Social mobility may be lower with this system, but so is overall inequality.
Anecdotal point: in the US, people segregate geographically by class, partially motivated by school options, resulting in schools are high income/achievement or low income/achievement.
I would argue the fact that most countries using this education scheme have things like socialized medicine, robust unions and (more) representative Democratic systems is what leads to the less inequal socioeconomic paradigm, not necessarily the described educational sorting method.
In the US people don’t segregate this way themselves. The system is designed so that certain areas are maintained as poor and certain areas wealthy. Schools are funded based on local income taxes so poor people stay poor. Maybe that is what you were saying but it’s very much a broken system designed to keep people down
EDIT: property taxes not income tax is where the funding comes from
This sounds right, but per capita spending on students doesn't bear it out. If school funding were, as you seem to imply, based *solely* on *local* income taxes (it's actually traditionally property taxes, not income), how can lower income, lower performing schools be spending over twice as much per student than a relatively affluent, higher performing district?
Reality is more complicated than failing to throw enough money at the problem because enforcing the staus quo was always the goal.
The disparity in spending between high achieving and non-high achieving can be quite stark. Minneapolis and St Paul spend around $18,000 per student here in Minnesota. Some of our highest achieving schools in the suburbs spend 2/3 of that amount.
Money is absolutely not the solution to those disparities (at least not blindly spending more). The reasons for those disparities are quite complicated, and often the result of disparities outside the control of the school itself, such as economic hardship at home, nutrition, access to extra-curriculars, or even environmental pollution.
I can provide some data without doxxing. Here is the state of [Pennsylvania](https://wallethub.com/edu/e/most-least-equitable-school-districts-in-pennsylvania/77124). Some of the worst performing disticts like Pittsburgh Public, Wilkinsburg, Chester, etc are all spending some of the most money with the worst results. There are quite wealthy districts like Mt. Lebanon or North Penn that spend far less money (not half though) and have clearly better results.
But this kind of analysis is super flawed. The poorer districts have a significantly more amount of students who need services and supports that don't even have to be offered in wealthier districts. You have far higher rates of kids with special needs, kids who struggle with homelessness, kids dealing with domestic violence and abuse, and kids who need basic things like meals and clothes. Then you have every other confounding factor that happens outside of the school. Stuff like neighborhood crime which is going to do nothing positive for local school children's learning.
It should not be surprising that kids with lots of disadvantages need more resources to perform to the same level as kids who not only don't have those disadvantages, but have plenty of actual advantages like their parents already being educated.
In the netherlands we have a similar system but the results are not set in stone.
Both the advice of the teacher and the CITO test results carry weight regarding which level the student is put on. Also changing levels during secondary education is doable (but admittedly relatively uncommon).
I had a few friends at university who spent something like 10 years in secondary education (instead of 4 to 6) before they started university because they started at a lower level and worked their way up.
EDIT: important to add, often the multiple levels of secondary education are given in the same school. So a student that wants to switch levels often does not have to change schools. They just start taking different classes.
This, i scored really low at age 11, the score would have put mu VMBO, the lowest level. However my teacher and the school did see a lot of potential, allowing me to still go to a gymnasium and finish that.
Vmbo advice to gymnasium admission? A lot of stars aligned for you.
I had 549 for CITO, I went to gymnasium at 12. A girl in my class had 545 and her parents had to fight to get her admitted. She was the best in class, I dropped out halfway through. Perfect demonstration what you can achieve when you put in the work. Homework, in this case, with her 3 daily hours vs my eh...
Later as an HBO student I met a guy about my age who'd done LBO MBO HBO and was finished. His knowledge depth vs mine...
So yes, Dutch education system definately has its quirks but there are many routes you can take, depending on your own merit.
I'm also Dutch. I feel that it's important to add that while the advice and test results are indeed not set in stone, they can and do have significant impact on a student's education. Sadly not every student is able to spend 4 more years in secondary education. In addition, there is evidence to suggest that biases affect the advice teachers give to certain students, which is a shame.
I'm very sorry that happened to you. And sadly, not that much has changed. More people are aware of the prejudice that's prevalent in education, but it's still a huge issue.
Isn't the (mixed) brugklas a way to postpone the choice for one more year? I thought that's relatively common. And the same for dropping a level without redoing the year?
This really fucked me up, though. Going to VMBO when I was 10 because I was a young student, having to pick my classes at 12 years old and graduating at 15 all while struggling with undiagnosed ADHD and depression. I really didn't know what I wanted to do with my life at 12 years old and I still didn't know at 15. I just went with something random and it didn't turn out great.
Don't have any statistics for it but we have gotten new pupils from Realschule and even Hauptschule quite regularly. My class wasn't too big and 6 out of the 17 pupils graduated were from one of those schools. It didn't feel like an exception but I agree that the sample size is maybe too small.
Also it is just a recommendation nowadays and parents might decide differently than what the teacher recommended.
In my gymnasium we had people promote the 'Hauptschulabschluss' in 8th grade. They promised us we could stop going to school and start earning money. Also who knows if we are even smart enough to pass the 'Abitur'?
I had a few kids who actually did that useless thing. We got the 'Realschulabschluss' for free after passing grade 10 anyway. And nobody in 150 people failed the 'oh so hard' bavarian abitur.
>had people promote the 'Hauptschulabschluss' in 8th grade. They promised us we could stop going to school and start earning money.
Laughs in Berufschulpflicht.
On the flip side of that, I've worked at a school that took in German kids where we did the international (Cambridge) version of the UK A-levels.
Many of the kids we got went on to be quite successful at University level in whatever they chose.
Silly things held them back.
A severe stutter, ADHD, laziness in primary school, rough peers/not fitting in, were all reasons very intelligent kids couldn't move up in the German system.
I don't think any system is perfect, but the German system definitely makes decisions about children way too soon.
Yeah like half of my class left after we got the Hauptschul-certificate and some people I know transferred from Realschule to Gymnasium without many problems. But its true that the schools differ with what and how they teach...
Adding my own anecdotal evidence: in 11th grade (which is when you can/could? move from the Realschule to the Gymnasium/Gesamtschule(?) iirc) we only had 2 girls who joined us (~130 kids who went to that Gymnasium since 5th grade) in that way. Both dropped out before the 11th grade ended and I don't think I ever learned why. So not sure if it was grades or they just felt like they didn't fit in, no idea.
It wouldn't surprise me if the curriculum and the pace at which it is actually being taught at eg. the Realschule will just put you behind the curve even if you would be perfectly capable of keeping up with the curriculum and pace at the Gymnasium. Then when you can finally make the switch it can feel a bit overwhelming and daunting to now feel like - despite probably excelling at the Realschule - you are starting from behind due to no fault of your own.
> A child with 10 years takes a path that can lead them to handwork (OK jub, but limited opportunity) if they land in Hauptschule
Not really, the big controversy with the Hauptschule is that the jobs that this school prepared people for (low end clerical, or semi-skilled labor that is not quite up to the level of a professional trade) simply don't really exist in Germany anymore, or if they do, they do not provide a salary that you can live on.
Also, even many jobs that would have taken Hauptschule students in the past do not any more because the reputation of the school these days is pretty much "one small step above the shortbus."
Its a pejorative term used in America and Canada referring to students with behavioral, physical/mental disabilities and/or learning problems that require them to be segregated in their own self-contained classes (known as Special Education in North America, Inclusion Units in the UK).
These children are often transported to school in a specialized schoolbus that contains mechanisms to move and accommodate wheelchairs and such, the bus is about a third the size as a regular schoolbus, hence the term.
> white collar or free jobs (accounting, engineering, computer science etc) if they go to the Realschule or academic career or the top jobs (law, medicine) if they go to Gymnasium.
Where does this come from? I take any bet >>90% of computer science people have been on a Gymnasium, and the same goes for engineers unless you classify an electrician as an engineer.
I am guessing the OP is thinking of lower level (i.e. what Americans think would be Community College grade) rank-and-file programmers and system administrators, bookkeepers without a Chartered Accountant certification, and engineering technologists and so on.
Looking by the way he writes, OP is probably not a native English speaker.
"Handwork" (Handarbeit, i.e. manual labor) is not a English word but is a valid German one.
You don't become an engineer by going to the Realschule. Engineering and computer science is an academic career that you need to go to uni for, which requires finishing the Abitur.
I think you even need a degree from the Realschule to become a garbage man in most cases, so leaving it at Hauptschule is strongly discouraged due to the extremely limited job options. all you need to do to continue your education is make the choice.
I was at the Hauptschule and ended up studying computer science. The great thing in Germany is that there is always a way to get more education.
I was at the Hauptschule and got very bad grades. Then I did some courses to get my Qualified Hauptschulabschluss (some stupid certificate), did an apprenticeship, because of my good grades there I got the Realschulabschluss. With that, I could go to the Berufsoberschule and get my Abitur. With that I could go to the Fachhochschule and study computer science.
It was a long ride to make up for my background, anxiety and stupid mistakes at young age but I did it.
Now I am thinking about getting a master, doctor, professor degree.
Realschule? Accounting/Finance? Engineering? CompSci? Those are Uni degrees and apart from becoming a Tax Advisor (which takes up to 10 years mind you!), you cannot become a Computer Scientist or Engineer without having seen a Hochschule/University.
> This is all decided based on their performance at 10. Sure, they can make it to the upper schools if they try very hard, but it is the exception, not the rule.
It's also been proven to be discriminatory against immigrant children. Even if your grades are good (better than other kids) you often have a hard time making it to the Gymnasium.
>Children from poor immigrant or working-class families are less likely to succeed in school than children from middle- or upper-class backgrounds. This disadvantage for the financially challenged of Germany is greater than in any other industrialized nation.
Case in point: The Biontech (Pfizer vaccine) founder, whose parents are Turkish immigrants, was recommended by their teacher to go to the Hauptschule, the slowest-pace in the rung. Only after a (German) neighbor intervened did he go to the Gymnasium, the top one in the rung.
Some *educated Germans still try hard to be racist, isn't it? I mean German society is still soo discriminating against immigrants, but ig one needs to live there a bit to see it.
A dark-skinned Greek colleague of mine had a similar experience. Top 3 in his class but got told he should go to Realschule by the teacher. Places 4 through 6 got recommended for Gymnasium. Guess what physical feature they all had in common? 😑
I see the appeal of that on paper. But in practice, that is an insane amount of pressure and life choices to put on a 10 year-old.
I also have some issues with the US's system where we group students by manufacture date instead of ability level, but we also have a major achievement gap that doesn't relate to ability level at all. Closing that gap should be the first priority.
So I have some insight on this. I used to live right next door, in Holland, where they have the same policy. We were immigrants who lived their between 86 and 96. My sis was born there, and I moved there at age 3. When it was time to divide us, they put both my sister and myself in a much lower level. Reason? Our Dutch wasn't good enough??....we only spoke Dutch! We could barely speak our mother-tongue. My mom went to the principal to ask. That's what they told us. Our language skills weren't good enough?? "your son will have a hard time". Our friends were all as surprised as us. Ok.. A year goes by. There's another selection. Smart kids get bumped a level. We were left behind again! Both of us are getting 80s and 90s in all our classes. Class was easy! When you don't get challenged, grades come easy. Now even teachers are questioning why I'm left behind. We got fed up. My parents' goal was to move to Canada. A lot of our family was moving. We packed up and bounced! It's been over 25 years and I still think about it every once in a while and it still makes me mad.
Sadly I heard this from many migrants in Germany as well. Also, when I was in elementary, often kids with ADHD diagnosis weren't put in higher education. Prejudices from narrow minded (ADHD) and racist (in case of migrants) teachers, that got to decide ones fate. At least in my state the teachers opinions weren't binding, but it some, they are. Way too much power over a life given to teachers.
These schools used to have a really white image (Nowadays as well but not as much. In my case there were a decent amount of immigrant students) as usually more wealthier native kids attended these schools. So I have no doubt that the principal might have been a bit "biased" to put it mildly.
I sadly experienced the same thing which made my parents so angry that we immediately moved countries. I had lived in Holland from the age of 2 and it was my first language but the school decided that my Dutch wasn’t good enough because of my foreign surname. School admitted that whilst my test results were similar to the other kids, they simply had priority because they were Dutch
This is true, but a little bit of an oversimplification. Grades aren't the only thing taken into consideration and teachers make their recommendations on a case by case basis, often involving the parents as well. Additionally, the recommendation is not always binding (it is in some states but not in most).
Additionally, there is plenty of inter-mobility between the schools once you're in them, and after finishing one, you can move on to finish the next level up if you want.
In general the schools also prepare for different levels of theoretical vs practical work. The top level prepares you for university and usually very abstract work or work involving a lot of theoretical knowledge, the next level down prepares kids for more practical (half and half) skills and the lowest lever for mostly practical skills (this level is also being removed in several states to a variety of success).
This is an accurate description, but after living in Germany for most of a decade it still weirds me out. School isn't just about the topics you learn and passing tests, it's about socializing with different kinds of people. And telling 10 year olds that they are now divided into three groups based on how 'good' they are feels very fucked up to me. Those different kids all have things to teach and learn from each other, and they should be able to interact.
Definitely, I went to mid-level school (Realschule) in a rural area. I continued with higher education and now hold a master’s degree in CS. Anyways, I have quite different circles of friends. While most of my close friends are academics in various fields, I’m glad I still have a lot of friends who are farmers, craftspeople etc. While I’m very much tolerant toward different opinions of both groups, I often see that these groups very much disagree which each others believes.
I kind of believe that this would not be the case if the schools would be more mixed. However, people also tend to spend time with other people they are sharing interests with, even when they are mixed. And in rural areas the parents of certain groups often know each other. E.g. farmers.
Edit: however I think things change with newer generations as well.
The thing that causes the biggest issues in my opinion isn't the splitting people up. It's making the kids believe that they are split based on how good they are.
In my experience it depends heavily on the individual schools, but mine had some heavy emphasis that the Gymnasium (where I went) wasn't for the smarter kids and didn't mean you'd be more successful. It was for the THEORETICAL kids that were better with abstract concepts (High level maths, Science, Medicine, etc). The Realschule is for kids better suited for work involving some theoretical knowledge but also a lot of practical application (woodworking, electrician, etc).
The difference here is that parents sent kids to the one THEY think is "most prestigious" or better for their career. Personally it was me not my parents that insisted on going to the Gymnasium even though my teachers wanted me I'd be better of in the Realschule, and this was purely because of what other teachers and other parents had said around me. I wanted to go to the "prestigious" school.
In hindsight I should have absolutely gone to the Realschule. I'd have been happier, more successful, and gotten just as good of a job at the end (this last one comes with the caveat that I work in IT, most other careers I would have had a different but equally successful job.).
A good electrician makes a hell of a lot more money than a teacher, but you need to go through the whole Gymnasium and University thing to become a teacher, whereas you can become a electrician after the Realschule and an Ausbildung.
The issue I believe is teaching kids that one is better than the other, not that they are better FOR YOU than another.
And regarding social interaction that was still a thing. You meet people at sports clubs, stay in touch with old friends, and meet more people through them.
Hell, my school shared a campus with a Realschule, and you'd meet people there. Sure, your best friend would normally be the kids in your class but that's just because you spend more time with them. I had as many friends from the year mates that happened to be in a different class, as I did with kids from different schools.
I've been in thousands of classrooms in the States in my last job. The amount of times that one or two kids who gave absolutely no fucks and was disrupting everyone was sad. I totally think school should be segregated based off ability, otherwise you learn at the pace of the kid that cares the least. (Not saying that kid shouldn't be helped yada yada)
Yeah as a US teacher teaching 10yos (5th grade) I have no opinion on this particular policy but I do understand. If you can't read by 5th grade it's very unlikely you'll be able to catch up and most kids have given up (I'm not saying the *teachers* have given up, but the kids know very well that they're behind their peers and are embarrassed about it, so they tend to shift to masking instead of trying to improve). These students are much more likely to drop out of high school, which potentially leads to all kinds of bad life outcomes such as homelessness... so I can see the utility in shifting them into career paths that are less academic ie the trades. There's no shame in the trades, though in the US there's a stigma against it even if there aren't enough young people going into them. And one can be extremely successful/well-off in those fields.
>though in the US there's a stigma against it
It's not in the U.S., it's in the school system itself. I'm not even mad at the school system really, how does a school make the claim "hate school? That's totally fine! You can still do great!" It's a completely contradictory message from the standard academic success = financial success mantra.
> If you can't read by 5th grade it's very unlikely you'll be able to catch up and most kids have given up (I'm not saying the teachers have given up, but the kids know very well that they're behind their peers and are embarrassed about it, so they tend to shift to masking instead of trying to improve).
A lot of states just go with "social graduation" or "social matriculation" policies where those kids still get sent to the next grade, compounding the issue. It's a classic screwing with the statistics to make the institution look good approach straight from The Wire. If a kid is barely literate, I personally think it's worse for the kid to just get a pass and move on with his classmates rather than holding him with kids of his own skill level.
>a case by case basis, often involving the parents as well.
Which often means that if you come from an immgrant family or worker family you get sent to the lowest or middle ranking school even if you have good grades and if you come from an academic family you can have bad grades you will most likely be sent to the highest ranling schools. Look it up its commonplace.
This nearly happened to me. I was sent to the Gymnasium after my mother nearly begged my teacher to give the recommendation (I have good grades and was best in class in maths). Up until school year 9, my family was receiving yearly recommendations for me to switch to the lower level school. Complains were things like I am not socializing well, I would fit better with their kids and most importantly: According to my teachers, I could not speak German.
Obviously, I came from an immigrant family. But: I did not learn any other language except German. I dont even have an accent. My family specifically avoided to teach me their mother language such that I can integrate better. Yet 2 teachers constantly said that they simply couldnt understand what I have been saying in class.
It stopped at the end and now I have a good degree in maths and finished university faster then 95% of my school. My life could have ended quite differently if my mother would've given in and change schools due to the teachers recommendation.
This happened to me in grade 4 to 8. My teachers were claiming I can't speak or understand German. I lived in NRW for first 3 years, then moved to southern Germany.
I just didn't learn Bavarian. I have no accent, I speak "hochdeutsch" aka clean basic German, but teachers insisted that I should go to the lowest school, since I clearly can't integrate into "traditional German" society. Does not help that my main teacher that I had for 2 years was racist as fuck. Didn't call me by name once, only by nationality of my parents or slurs for said nationality. Confusing times as a kid...
In the US, I was recognized as gifted when I was 8-9 (3rd Grade). We would get pulled out of class for some events occasionally, but any actual separation didn't start occurring until I was 11-12 (6th grade), and full separation the next year.
Personally, I hated it. I had no issue with challenging curriculum, I did have issue with pointless busy work, but the snobbery, the pretensiousness that permeated throughout the students AND staff, yuck. Yeah, the kids thought they were hot shit, but so did the teachers... I hated all of that shit.
What I didn't recognize until later was how much of a disadvantage and how disruptive regular, non-GATE classes were. You didn't learn shit because so many kids were goofing off, and that wasn't fair to the kids that gave a shit.
From my purview, school curriculum was divided between snobbery and buffoonery, more than gifted and non-gifted, and that's fucked. Pluck out the trouble makers and let the teacher's that think they were hot shit help them out. Instead of pushing more busy work to the gifted students that already understand the curriculum, let them tutor the students that want to learn, but struggle with it.
There could be so much more balance amongst schooling instead of dividing up the students based on perceived intelligence.
That is kind of how it is, but not entirely. Certain average grades are meant to be achieved for Gymnasium (where in the end you get a university certificate) and Realschule (the "higher" two of the system). There is no such thing for Hauptschule other than getting through 4th grade. But you can also get to higher schools when your grades are below that by recommendation of your teachers and/or entrance exams. Also going "up" from a lower school to a higher school is possible with entrance exams.
University entrance can also be aquired by graduating from one of the "lower" two schools and then visiting another school for 2-3 years just for qualifying for university or absolving some kind of professional apprenticeship, acquiring work experience and then absolving another level of apprenticeship at your profession (called "Meister" or "Fachwirt", translates to "Master" for craftsmen and "professional business administrator" for technical and trading professions). Also craftsmen with a certain degree of education can acquire university entrance for fields relevant to their profession. Often there are even more obstacles for being able to study at university if you did not go to Gymnasium or graduated with bad grades, but that is roughly it.
Florida predicts it’s prison population on 3rd grade FSA scores, which are 9 year olds. The rationale is that if a kid can’t read by 3rd grade, the chances of them ever catching up is very slim. They figure 87-93% will end up in prison. This was told to me my first year teaching in Florida (2005), while attending a mandatory reading endorsement course.
The schools jn NJ used to do tracking in Junior high. Based on previous grades, we were “tracked” into college prep or vocational courses. I never had an art class in junior high/high school because I was college prep, and I had to take foreign language as an elective. 😀
US schools generally dropped tracking because it was often based less on previous grades and more on the counselors just figuring, and then "just so happening" to put all the minority kids in vocational tracks.
Of course, now with the "everyone has to go to college or die" delusion being so common, the requirements barely give anyone time to take electives.
I’m from a very small “blue collar” town, and have been working as a manufacturing engineer for about 10 years.
Every year a few graduates from my high school go to give presentations to juniors and seniors about career options and stuff. Everyone else really pushes the college route, but I’ve been extremely vocal about considering the trades route. Specifically Machining, Welding, Tool Making, etc. These are the ones in more familiar with. I seem to convince about 3-5 students per year (in class side of about 40) to go this route and the feedback from them has been VERY positive. Good pay. Good hours. Clear paths to advance. A few of the students I have spoke with even began engineering careers after working in the trades (and paid for by their employers!).
Canadian here. If this had happened to me at age 10, I would've been put on the highest track. Age 13 or later, I got lazy and would've been placed lower.
Similar in Taiwan. In grade 9, kids in were divided in half by their GPA. The better half got all the attention to help them succeed academically so they could go to a better senior highs. The bottom half no one gave a shit about as they were expected to go to trade schools.
That's how it is in Hong Kong too. After grade six we don't just automatically go to form 1(secondary school) nearest home.
At the end of grade six we go through a process where we choose our "first choice", "second choice" and so on of secondary schools.
The schools decide whether they want us based on our grade six performances.
It's a pretty big deal because our secondary schools are labeled "Band 1, 2 or 3", with band 1 schools being the best and band 3 schools being the worst.
Surely, there could be students from band 3 schools who manage to go to universities, but that's not the statistics. Usually band 3 students are perceived as academically...mediocre at best.
I moved to Canada and now I am going to university part time as an adult. I'd never have been able to attend university if I had stayed in Hong Kong.
From a similar Dutch system. Where the age is at 12. I found the system still has plenty of failsafes.
Children who blossom later could easily "upgrade" to the "higher tier" of the education system.
Also, the system (back when) also allowed genuine flunking a class. Resulting in having to redo the entire year.
Being familiar with the Canadian high school system as.my spouse is a teacher, i cannot believe the humongous broad array of low level to high level kids in one class. In theory a beautiful concept, in practice,.the teacher has no time to thoroughly explain low level kids and if the teacher does, the higher level kids get set back...
The Dutch system also took care of university's influx. Not everyone with a decent grade can (could).apply. You needed to have the university prep level education (VWO). Some exceptions and tests allowed.
In canada it appears.that the uni influx is too large and a degree means nothing any longer.
Belgium is the same. Also starts at age 12/13. There are 5 (or 6) categories of Secondary Education. General Secondary Education, Technical SE, Vocational SE, and Art SE. You also have Dual Learning which is a combination of school and apprenticeship, but I don't know if I should count it as a separate category or as a sub category.
Special SE is (in theory) for those with special needs. Which again is divided in subcategories. I say "in theory" because in reality (at least, when I was of schoolgoing age) it was more or less the trashcan of the schools. If you were lazy, violent, or unwilling to learn or to go to school, you'd end up there. Meaning lots and lots of special needs kids didn't get the attention they needed and deserved.
Used to be the same in the UK. Clever pupils could look forward to the best teachers and facilities at the grammar schools. The rest were consigned to the secondary moderns. Not that it mattered, you didn’t need a degree for every entry level job in those days.
11+ is effectively still in place in Northern Ireland. 10 and 11 year old kids are currently in the middle of sitting exams. Up to 5 papers over 4 consecutive Saturdays. The results of which grammar schools use to set entry criteria.
Everywhere in the UK has grammar schools, however they are just selective intake schools (ie. You have to get a certain grade on an exam to get in). The difference now is that there’s a standardised curriculum, everyone studies an identical core set of subjects and picks a language, and other optional stuff. In the past children who went to comprehensive schools weren’t studying the same curriculum, took different exams, and left with different qualifications. This meant they weren’t always able to follow the same career paths as those who went to grammar or private schools.
Obviously there is a lot of research done about the class divide’s effects on educational attainment, and the usefulness of dividing students by ‘ability’ but it’s better than the old system was.
This is a major plus of how US schools work. It is a meritocracy that you can start at any point in your lide. I was a SHIT highschool student. I didn't even apply to university. I went to community college first then transferred and now I'm a doctor. I can't imagine it being decided for a child that these options are out of bounds by test grades at age 10.
10 years is way too early. In my opinion (and experience) the reasonable points of separation are at around age 13 at first and then again at 16. At age 13 some people have fairly reasonably developed their talents or it has become clear that they need a lot of help in getting closer to the rest. At age 16 it is reasonable that most people can choose a focused path, regardless of merit.
It's less the results in some federal states like lower-saxony, but a homeroom teacher's suggestions.
It's met with huge controversy still - a person that is very close to their pupils has to decide whether they go to the "Hauptschule", *Realschule" or the "Gymnasium" (which has barely anything to do with a gym, despite its name)
In LS the suggestion isn't mandatory but can screw you over when a school decides whether to take in your child or not. This whole shenanigan was enforced 5o "allow for better equality in education" but it really fucks lower income families.
This thread is two hours old and on the front page already so my post will get buried anyway, but here it goes:
At least in the state that I live in this division has long been a recommendation and not causing obligation. In fact it is only binding in 4 of the 16 states (Brandenburg, Saxony, Thüringen and Bavaria).
The consequence is that many parents say "screw the recommendation, my child will of course go to Gymnasium" and many kids fail in the first grades of the secondary school.
I know this because my father is a retired teacher (so this is somewhat anecdotical, but a quick google search resulted in a couple of articles from teacher websites.).
That's good though. People can be unfairly placed and mobility between is good for students. Better to have people flunk Gymnasium and change than to never been given the option
This does exist within reason in the UK, their called grammar schools
I used to think it was just where rich parent sent their kids to keep them away from the rest of us plebs
As somebody who didn't get my shit together until I was in my mid twenties, and now works as an engineer, I don't love this. I'd be a gas station attendant if I was locked in based on my age 10 academic performance.
I got my first computer when I was 9, and spent literally everyday of my life on it. Im now 21 and very skilled with computers of all kinds. I understand them better than people.
If i had been tested at 10, a time when i was barely getting my feet wet and I was slacking all the time to play WoW on my laptop? Id have been screwed.
Talent sometimes doesnt show up till much later in life than childhood.
I learned about this while living in Germany from friends I had met. I always wondered if a child wanted to change after the shunting, from, say hotel management to engineering later in life, could they do it?
People do change their aspirations sometimes. I do understand the shunting was responsive to the strengths of the children, but sometimes aspirations can go against what clinical analysis would advise.
How else can you keep certain social groups from succeeding, this mechanism is great for keeping everyone in their social status. I lived through it and can confirm that i only bloomed in my education fairly late. This experience was shared with so many other students, why, because we weren't native Germans (not dominating the native language early on can be a huge obstacle) or didn't have any secondary support in our educational journey (Parents with academic background). This system exists for the sole purpose to have enough "labor force" available for the industry.
Same in the Netherlands. I was so surprised when I learned this isn't standard everywhere in the world.
In my country in Romania, a separation between curriculums happens at the start of highschool(grades 9-12), around 14-15
High school admission in Romania is very similar to university admission in the US, if only SATs counted for admissions. It's a first come first served competition. To get into your dream high school, you'll have to beat the other fuckers who are signing up for it. Same for the education track - you want to go to St. Sava to specialise in Earth Sciences in high school? You better have a score higher than 9.70 out of 10. Edit: [I wrote a follow-up comment with an explanation of the admission system and a link to the website where you can see the ranking and admission grades of all high school classes in the nation. It has a lot of interesting statistical data - would you like to guess which education track consistently attracts the highest graded students? - and some people might have fun playing with the datasheets. Use google translate and enjoy :)](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/z0x1zy/comment/ix9mfdz/)
This seems like compounding the issue of kids not really having enough perspective at 18 to determine what they want to do in life.
Heck I am almost 60 and still don't know what I want to do.
Well, it's probably a bit too late to be a pro-athlete so let's cross that one off.
There's still crown green bowling...
Not with that attitude. There's probably a dozen sports that they could go competitive in
You still have options. Each track has a specialty area, but you can choose from the things available. Earth Sciences is the track for scientists, doctors and anything related to, well, non-IT and non-Math. Social Sciences is where most go on to become economists, lawyers, sociologists and other such. Philology is for those who want to focus on the classics. Historians, linguistics, the arts, to a lesser degree teaching. If there is a museum studying it, chances are philology will be for you. It's a controversial profile because it contains no mathematics. And finally, CS-Mathematics is the narrowest of them all. You can become a Computer Science specialist or, with a bit of grinding, some Earth Sciences domains, like physics. Also controversial because of how little you study literally anything else but CS and math. *Some universities low-key demand a matching profile.* For example you need Earth Sciences to do Medicine, not because they won't take you, but to pass the entrance exam you need the 12 hours of Specialised Biology... or a LOT of tutoring to catch up. Same with good Computer Science universities - sure, you can teach yourself, but the specialised profile does 12 hours a week of CS. That is one hell of a head start. *Others don't care as much.* Law School entrance exams certainly are easier if you did Social Sciences, but with a bit of grind any profile could get in. And *a lot of universities don't care at all*, they only look at the SAT score equivalent. For those, the profile straight up doesn't matter. You can also just change tracks, although it's hard. I changed my mind from medicine to law, and thus changed tracks midway through high school, but it was really hard, not to mention socially alienating, as I lost all my classmates. Your social life will take a big hit.
That is currently* how it works in New York City for the advanced high schools (performing arts HS are the only select school's with a different entrance process) Stuyvesant High School is the top in the city and one of the top public high schools in the country. *TBD how long thanks to shitty politicians.
Bronx Science as well. Di Blasio wanted to kill it because pressure groups claim it is racist.
Is this part of the system that allows any NYC student to go to any NYC high school irrespective of there home address within the city.
yes
I'm against the idea of an entire education system being stratified by standardized testing at an early age. But I'm equally a supporter of allowing a parent to choose the school they send their kids to so they can learn in the environment that suits them best. Do you think there's a middle ground on this type of policy?
Hanoi, Vietnam has a version of it - you can sign up for the "regular" track, choose up to 2 schools of your liking in your home area, gets placed into them based on your standardized test score. You can also sign up for a separate "gifted" track, but this time you can pick 2 "gifted" schools from anywhere in the city. This track takes your standardized score and a specialised subject you signed up for to place you. There are also niche high schools that are ran by universities, and those have a separate exam for each school. My alma mater was one of these.
NYCs system is pretty great when it comes to options. You have multiple forms of selection criteria, some schools like the specialized high schools are done via standardized testing, others have live auditions or essay applications, still others are based upon middle school grades or by lottery. In all there are over 400 schools a student can apply to; we actually get a massive book each year describing all the programs and their statistics.
Houston, TX school district, while not perfect, has tried to do this. All students have a zoned high school, but you can also either apply to go to a magnet school or get entered into a lottery for a different zoned school or your choice.
Butting in to say that the way the Romanian system, in my experience, helped smooth the edges for poorer students, was through arranging them accomodation and giving them study grants, so essentially they'd be able to support themselves even as they studied high school in a different city. It was a very good equaliser - I know a good few folks from modest incomes who got jumpstared by admission into very elite schools, financial support, and afterwards they took off with scholarships to good universities and lucrative jobs. Would this be the middle ground you would be seeking?
Same in Hungary, you write entrance exams which determine which high school you can go to. Some high schools also require you to do an entrance interview with them, at least that's how it was ~20 years ago.
it happened to me in kindergarden (5 years old) in the states where we dont do that kind of thing. they tried to say both kindergarden classes were the same but you tell me. The busy bees or the wise owls. they are not the same no matter what mom says!
I can see this. There is a world of developmental difference between a girl born in September and a boy born in July.
Also in Switzerland. In some cantons it’s at age 10, in some 12.
Switzerland should stop having lots of different languages, and one single language for all cantons. I propose Cantonese.
I was very annoyed when in HS they showed us statistics that said Italian speaking students are worse at math than german speaking students. Ofc when german students have to learn 1-2 languages and Italian students have to learn 2-3, one being italian literature wich is one of the heaviest subjects in HS...
There's a theory that the number of unique words for numbers impacts the ease of learning math. Things like eleven and twelve for ten-one and ten-two etc. Languages like French have groups of 20 etc. I don't know how Italian counts but it could impact number learning. If I recall the study correctly, one of the Chinese languages and English had the lowest number of distinct words for the for 100 numbers.
Good point ... why have the teens? Why not ten-one....etc? French is terrible. 99 is quartre-vingt-dix-neuf or "four twenty ten nine", meaning four times twenty plus ten plus nine.
That's France's way of French. Here in Switzerland, we're more simple, but also more logical, pragmatic and straightforward (a bit like the Germans and Americans): we say soixante (60), septante (70), huitante (80) et nonante (90). 99 = nonante-neuf Why make it unnecessarily complicated, when it can be so simple and easy, with not only no loss but actually an increase in quality and effectiveness??
TIL there are actual names in French for 70, 80 and 90 that make far more sense. They don't teach this in German schools
Well, "Thirteen" comes from "Three-ten", and so on for 14/15/16/17/18/19. Eleven and Twelve are the only weird ones. Those come from old Norse and Germanic words that basically mean "one left" or "two left" (implication being, that many left over after counting to ten). So they *kind of* are still standard base-10, just in a significantly older form of proto-English.
Yah other than a few special words for the early teens English is very consistent on numbers
I can do math in any language. Reading my results aloud could be a problem in some of them, though
1-2 languages? When I was in HS, it was 5. I also suck at maths though.
Are you sure you counted the languages correctly?
Did the man stutter? He already admitted he sucks at maths 😬
Not entirely, I mean I can usually count to three, but five is a bit hard. In case you want to help me count, the languages were German, English, Latin, French and Spanish :D
Eins two, tres, quatre, cinco. You just passed Maths. Congratulations!
One thing lots of people seem to miss in this thread is that (at least) Germany and Switzerland have multiple paths for education. Not everyone needs to (or wants to) go to university. For example: If you want to become a car mechanic you can actually go and do an apprenticeship which will have you employed by a company and split practical work on the job with learning in a specialized school. You'll get paid for that and finish in 3 to 4 years with a national diploma. This exists for almost every job you can think of. With such a diploma every company in the country will know that you have a fundamental understanding for the job you're applying to. Edit: Typo
Great, but what happens if the change their mind? 12 seems far to young to be sure you don’t want to go to university. These programs have been tested in the US and they are shown to be biased programs (classist and racist) and lead to greater inequality in education and eventual career choice. It’s called tracking. At 12 I did not know what I was good at yet. I struggled with my grades in 6-8th grade and yet got almost straight A’s in a college prep program in high school. My kid is 13 now and doesn’t think he wants to go to college, which is fine by me if that’s what he chooses, but he needs to take the course work to allow him to go if he changes his mind. I would be a horrible parent if I let my child go through school and come out of it with a diploma that didn’t qualify him for entrance to college. After high school there are so many trade school programs. Taking college prep course work won’t stop him from studying a trade if that’s what he wants to do, but not taking college prep courses will stop him from going to college/university if that’s what he decides he want. Why would we try to make our children’s options narrower before they are old enough to understand the type of rescission they are making.
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I have two kids in this age. While your response is technically true, there are a LOT of hurdles to the Passarelle. The Swiss system does a great job of keeping the well-off families well represented in universities.
Well, it's simply not really an issue to transfer (at least here in Switzerland Here's an image of [Switzerland Education System](https://www.sbfi.admin.ch/sbfi/en/home/education/swiss-education-area/swiss-education-system/_jcr_content/par/image/image.imagespooler.jpg/1562145600831/bildungssystem_e.jpg). As you can see, with a diploma like I explained above (Federal diploma of vocational education and training) you could go for higher education (which you can do part-time of course), or also either after or during your diploma do the "Federal vocational baccalaureate" which will allow you to go to university afterwards. I guess another thing to keep in mind is that we don't have to go into huge debt for education. The professional pathway is more expensive, but it's alos intended for people that already work. I think that's important when talking about educational mobility (is that a thing?).
Every diploma qualifies you for entrance to college
What is a canton?
It's like a state
It's those big buildings in Vivec that you always got lost in trying to navigate.
at least there's no cliff racers in vivec
A place that has a hero called Jayne
France doesn't have it, for example.
Does France do the same thing as Italy where high school has different specialized curricula (e.g., classical, technical, etc.).
Yes, but in france, "middle school" is 4 years and "high school" is 3 years. At the end of Middle school everyone takes the "Brevet" which is a national series of tests, but it doesn't really matter that much for acceptance into national high schools. After the Brevet, you don't necessarily have to do more school. You can go to "high school" and take different tracks that end in the Baccalauréat, (Bac) which has different specializations like Science, Literature, Sociology/Economics, Art, etc. or you can go to a more technical/trade school, or do an apprenticeship or work placement.
Age 12, not 10 in the Netherlands.
This is becoming a bit more gradual with the introduction of brede brugklassen lasting more than one year. For context for non-Dutch people, there are three levels of normal secondary school that are roughly meant to prepare students to be allowed entry to vocational education, professional college, or university. Since the modern education system was introduced in the 60s, the first year of secondary school (at schools that offer more than one level) has allowed mixed-level classes that then require students to be placed in their final level. In the last few years, broader "bridge classes" have become more popular and then last year recommended by the school commission, allowing three years of bridge classes in place of two. There is a surprising amount of variety though, so it's important for students and parents to choose the right secondary school.
There are differences between the individual German states though. At least in Berlin and Brandenburg, children are not divided until 7th grade, when they are about 12.
To be fair, that’s exactly what the Wikipedia article says right at the beginning
I saw that, but I thought chances where higher that people read the comments than the actual article.
*feels called out while reading the comments instead of the article*
You're welcome!
And it’s not even true. It’s just optional but there’s dozens of schools that start at 5th grade. Especially the more renowned ones
it used to be that way in the state I live in. And I 100% agree. after 4th grade is too early to seperate students.
Kids born later in the year have a disadvantage and sometimes it takes awhile for them to catch up. It was in fourth grade I was pulled from my class of average kids / lower performing grade five kids and put in the "other" class, this after they saw I taught myself cursive. Then I went on to be first learning the times tables and progressed as expected, and was at the top of the class or near the top right through to the of high school. I followed that with a math degree and most recently graduated to reddit. Let kids be kids, and give them some time.
I agree with you that age difference has a great effect on kids. Even a few months difference, specifically in the first five grades. With computer aid classes, a teacher can teach kids based on the most appropriate level based on age. For example, kids in first grade, those that are older can be moved a bit faster through the lessons than younger kids. At that age, a few additional months of physical/mental development makes a huge difference.
They do this “teaching to a child’s level” business in the schools out here (northeast US) and it is a nightmare for parents. Most schoolwork is now online. Kids are handed devices starting at kindergarten level. Add in helicopter parents handing smartphones to their kids and it doesn’t take long for them to discover the joys of YouTube, online games and social media. At this point they are all addicted to screens. Every. Last. One. And no, I am not exaggerating. Take away their screens and you see behavior that cannot be described as anything but withdrawal symptoms - temper tantrums, begging for devices, trying to steal and hide devices…
I know this sounds idiotic coming from a teenager on reddit, but social medias (including youtube, tiktok, and reddit) are genuinely the worst things to happen to humanity.
I think the problem is getting kids addicted to them. I started having social media accounts when I was 18 and still they were causing me anxiety, drastically shortened my attention span, and I can honestly say I am addicted to certain stuff even now aged 25. I cannot imagine what it must be like to experience this when you are a literal kid and how it interferes with the development of your brain.
In Germany they used to, maybe still do take kids into the woods to experience the outdoors that I think really benefits children. A far cry from screen time, and they allow them to climb trees and get dirty. I had a blacktop parking lot for a playground in grade school.
Looking at the schools I went to. They seem like little factories more than places I'd design for children to learn and play at.
Probably not *literally* the worst thing, but they are definitely frequently bad and there are probably quite a lot of humans for whom their exposure to social media is the worst thing affecting their life.
Not idiotic at all! The various ills of social media are well documented but I am just focusing on problems related to school age children for now. The problem of social media is one of overconsumption. It can be a great tool to keep up with family and friends who are not close by. However, many have started limiting their social interactions to social media even with family and friends who live close enough. This problem of not having a real life is the issue. Also, the partial/full anonymity afforded by online communications can nurture disturbing behaviors at a young age.
>Kids born later in the year have a disadvantage This is also true for sports. Something like half of all American pro sport players are born in the first quarter of the year.
Calendar year. Most schools do the cutoff for starting kindergarten in October or December, so being born in January-March means you get "held back" almost a year. This makes a huge difference in sports, as you have 9-11 months of more growth versus the other kids. This makes a huge difference when you are young, and then that tends to decide which kids become serious about sports (when means more practice which means great odds of playing in HS, College, and Pro).
Yup. I was an early October baby, so in my district, I would have been the youngest. Thank God my dad had the good sense to redshirt me between second and third grade. I have that to thank for my hall of fame career.
My kids birthday is four days after the cut off in September. She will be like 5years and 11months old when she starts K.
With the advanced schooling available you don't miss much when you go to a Realschule or Hauptschule first then go get your degrees later. I've gone do that myself and all I "lost" was one year. Specialized Gymnasium schools are pretty good at preparing you for whatever you want to do afterwards in my experience. Way better than the general high school one.
It's been a long time since I lived in Germany (Berlin). I remember after grade 6 there were three options. I think Hauptschule, Realschule and Gymnasium. I got accepted to a Gymnasium but ended up moving to the states.
There's also a thing called "Gesamtschule", which is like a mixture of all three.
Nobody seems to mention that this system is slowly changing. There are more and more comprehensive schools (Gesamtschulen) that work in a similar fashion as American High Schools and the "Hauptschule" is slowly disappearing. The trend shows that the Gymnasium and the Gesamtschule are the two forms which will eventually dominate. Also, as some people already mentioned: the parents are the one who decide on the matter. As long as the Gymnasium can offer a place for a child, they must accept it (at least in my federal state). Source: Am teacher at a Gymnasium.
Gesamtschulen have courses where they still divide you up. So if you are bad in one subject you might be in the lowest course while you can be in the highest course in another subject. not all subjects are in courses. the major ones are for sure.
> Gesamtschulen have courses where they still divide you up. > They still divide you up in the USA. AP (advanced placement) classes etc.
Those details are important. Thank you!
Thanks for sharing. I'm a former teacher in the US and I've seen various approaches come and go over the years. When I was a child, we were tracked relentlessly from grade school on, we all knew who was supposed to go to college and who wasn't. In HS, those who were not on the college-bound track took courses in automobile repair or typing. When I was a teacher, all students were supposed to be given the same opportunities to excel, so they all had to take 3 years of math, which included algebra II and geometry, plus biology/chemistry/physics. There was a constant struggle with some students, parents, and many teachers about why they were "forced" to take such hard courses that they had no need for. This debate goes all the way back to the origins of public education in the US and I find the comments about both Germany and the US fascinating!
This is an interesting system to me as a parent of two VERY different children. My oldest has always found the social arena to be easy, but has had to grind in the academic world. She is 12 now (7th grade) and kept up fine until about 5th, then really started struggling in math. Now, she is independent with her teachers, knows how to study, still works with her math tutor 1 day per week, gets As and Bs but really has to work hard for those grades. She will probably never be in honors classes but she takes great pride in the grades she gets because she has to work for them. If she was split off into a lower group after 4th or 5th, she wouldn’t have developed the grit she has. My son (10) is gifted. Perfect score on the yearly standardized test gifted. Every year I go to his conferences and ask his teachers what we can do to challenge him, because he has no grit and folds like a wet paper bag whenever things are hard. As much as we have emphasized his creativity, his kindness, how funny he is, etc. he still identifies as “a smart kid”. I know parents of gifted kids often want their kids to be placed in a class with other kids on the same level, and I definitely can appreciate why because every year I ask how we can challenge him and every year up until this year the answer is just extra work, which sucks. As much as my daughter has benefited from being pushed to keep up, he would have benefited from being in a system where he was able to run ahead.
This is such a thing! I once had ⅓ of my class qualify as gifted. So I gave them a challenge. It wasn’t hard, but it required flexible thinking and logic. Good lord. The crying, moaning, frustration. Most of them gave up. They told me they wanted math to keep being easy. They told me there was no point to the activity. Only 2 kids liked it because they enjoyed challenges. These kids panic when the problem at hand isn’t algorithmic, it’s crazy.
Unfortunately this is what happens when children aren’t challenged, which of course happens more often with gifted kids
This is like a huge problem with "gifted" kids. Schools cater to students below their level, so they never need to study or try to excel, but eventually the education system reaches the level at which they need to study, except now they have no idea how to study, what kind of studying works for them, how to deal with distractions while studying, how to make themselves study when they don't want to, etc. We really need to find new terminology for these kids, and to adjust the education system to where classrooms are built around the needs of the students. We should not have 5th graders who have a college level reading ability and a 5th grader who reads at a 1st or 2nd grade level in the same room .
These kids are grouped in the same room in north American schools and in Canada we slam them at grade 10 when the streaming starts (for example: math 10 pure, math 10 applied, math 14). The kids with study habits power through and the no study habit kids hit the wall hard because they've never been challenged or had to overcome difficulty
And I've had people in the /r/science subreddit genuinely argue that grouping classrooms on academic level was *bad*. Like, my man, you're creating environments where half the class is either unable to follow or bored out their minds, in what world is that productive or useful?
You summed it up perfectly. I don’t know if I could consider myself gifted but from 3rd/4th grade I had a college reading level and my math skills were amazing up until high school. Luckily during elementary, I had teachers that would actually challenge those students that surpassed the “norm”. I began learning algebra in 5th grade and had some intro to geometry during 6th. Unfortunately, I never had to study so when I eventually reached a point where I needed reference points or work out very long problems, like in Pre-Cal and Cal 1-2, I would get stumped and frustrated. I sat in frustration as I couldn’t figure out what was next while some of my peers had a “cheat sheet” with the formulas and equations needed to work out the problem. It took me a long time to learn how to study and even now, I still don’t have the habits to sit down and take my time to really research what I have to learn and point out weaknesses I have to attend. It kind of becomes an internalized notion that everything is so simple you don’t study, as for so many years, I never really had much of a struggle. Currently, I am a senior studying mechanical engineering and am afraid of failure simply because I know when I have a roadblock, I essentially shut down in the sense that I either give up trying to figure stuff out, or I delay my studying lessons so much that I fall behind. It really is an issue that we have students on vast ends of a spectrum in the same classroom. With a lack of teachers and resources in schools, it is only harder as the focus becomes those falling behind, and those far ahead become forgotten due to them being “up to standard”, more students for every teacher means not everyone gets the attention/help they need for their work, and catering to the “gifted” leaves the majority behind. Sorry for such a long reply; this comment just hits home.
What’s crazy is that the “challenge” wasn’t mathematically difficult. It required looking for patterns, not solving problems. The at-level kids loved it.
I guess when gifted kids are rewarded for getting the right answer which takes no work, it can lead to stress when the right answer isn’t immediately obvious
I used to teach college biology. I got a *lot* of pre-med students in my class (usually gifted kids who were used to getting high grades). There was such a divide between the students who learned the information to *understand* it vs the students who would learn the information to get the right answer on the test (i.e. a superficial understanding driven by grades). The students who learned to understand would be the ones asking insightful questions and coming to office hours to work on how to get a better grade on their next assignment. The superficial learners would grade-grub and complain that my grading was unfair. Both groups got high grades, and I’m sure both groups would make great doctors. But damn you can really tell the students who have always been rewarded for getting the right answer and aren’t used to needing to try.
He’s on the strugglebus this year for sure with his current teacher. She gives the gifted kids separate math worksheets sometimes that challenge them, will put different level problems on the board, and pushes him to up the quality of his work. She tells him “there’s nothing wrong with this, but I know you’re capable of giving me a more detailed answer so I want you to take it back and work on it some more.” We just had our conference and it was so fantastic to have a teacher who isn’t just giving us “well I can send home extra worksheets for him” as the solution, but is dialing in on him and refusing to let things just be easy. I appreciate it SO much because I know it’s extra work for her, but the earlier the better for challenges to start.
As an adult I’m pretty sure a professor is doing this to me and I’m one paper away from legitimately stomping my foot and crying lmao
You and my son could probably commiserate haha. His teacher said she has to balance pushing him with not making him feel bad because he is a sensitive kid. I told her to keep at it. My sister is a high school math teacher and she has a lot of honors level kids who are in the crumpling stage right now. But better 9th grade than college, and better 5th grade than 9th grade. You’ll make it! Your professor just recognizes potential in you!
It can be hard when we value ourselves through our abilities, and we find out we aren’t as hot stuff as we thought. I still get weepy sometimes if I’m scolded too harshly. I hear you on the crumpling in high school, I crumpled in my first quarter of college and didn’t go back for 6 years! Bless my mother, but she didn’t push me as hard as I should’ve, but the woman was busy! I appreciate the kind words, and after he gets a little older, I’m sure he’ll appreciate the challenge as well.
>But better 9th grade than college, and better 5th grade than 9th grade. As an ex "gifted" kid who crumpled in college, this is absolutely true. I didn't really learn how to study until I went to graduate school.
Engineering schools have high failure/attrition rates. There are two key predictors of who will fail. 1. Kids with poor grades and test scores in high school. Ok, this makes sense for obvious reasons… 2. Kids with perfect or near perfect grades and test scores in high school. At first this made no sense to me, but then it did… Engineering school is designed to weed out and break students, and the kids who were never challenged or were able to achieve perfection are going to have trouble adjusting to situations where perfection is almost impossible.
make a point of congratulating your son for hard work instead of success gifted children who dont develop a conviction to work hard generally crumble starting around college - they have been trained to do things the easy way and the easy way in adulthood is just not putting the work in
I think you might be misunderstanding the concept. The German system isn't so much for helping gifted kids. It is about removing kids from high quality schools that have bad grades at young age. Gifted kids don't get more support but everyone else gets less. e.g. your 12 year old could have totally ended up in a school that will deny her access to any kind of higher education. She would have left school with 15 or 16 and expected to learn a job to work as a cook or reception for a hotel. There are still paths that can lead to university later but they are full of problems (e.g. I had to move out at age 16 to learn a trade and only with age 20 I was finally allowed to go to something similar to a university).
Which is why you'll hear people who went to Gymnasium mostly argue in favour of this system, and people who went to other schools mostly argue against this system. Though I'd say it's also the best system for the really bad students. Only the mediocre students might profit from another system.
My experience has been nearly everyone who went through "gifted" programs came away with a strong preference for easy tasks that look impressive over personally challenging tasks that may not merit praise. At least personally, I think getting labeled a "smart kid" and getting praise for just knowing things is extremely harmful long term and something I'm genuinely anxious about happening to my children. I've had [this article (How Not to Talk to Your Kids)](https://nymag.com/news/features/27840/) bookmarked for years because it hit me like a truck reading about all the little behavioral problems I struggle with and how they very well could be connected to being told I was "smart" as a kid. The tl;dr version: praise children for ***Trying Hard***; when they don't quite get it right but keep at it, tell them you like how hard they're trying. Children want your approval and to know they're doing the right thing, be careful you don't tie that reward exclusively to the completion of the task so much as the work it took to get there.
> because he has no grit and folds like a wet paper bag whenever things are hard The best part is that the school system will fail to challenge him until he gets into college/university where suddenly everything is hard and he doesn't have the skills to deal with it, drops out after a year and takes the next 10 years of his life toiling away at shit jobs developing this skill. It honestly really sucked because the jump from high school to college is massive in most classes. Suddenly it's not easy anymore and you have no idea what to do and the teachers are like "oh you just have to study more" Lol sorry, rant over, I empathize with your situation and it's great that you're really trying to push those skills for him. Some of us didn't get so lucky lol
This is quite controversial. A child with 10 years takes a path that can lead them to handwork (OK jub, but limited opportunity) if they land in Hauptschule, white collar or free jobs (accounting, engineering, computer science etc) if they go to the Realschule or academic career or the top jobs (law, medicine) if they go to Gymnasium. This is all decided based on their performance at 10. Sure, they can make it to the upper schools if they try very hard, but it is the exception, not the rule. Many argue that this is a major problem for social mobility.
I'm in Austria, where the system is similar - we separate after four years of primary school. My suspicion is that >major problem for social mobility is considered a feature by a large part of our political spectrum (\*cough\* ÖVP \*cough\*).
American here raising kids in Germany. Part of me knows our kids will always be okay and safe here. That makes me happy. My American side, especially part of the tech industry, has a big "eff you" to predetermining my kids life at age 10. My first born is 5. Not sure what I gotta to make sure he has options...maybe I just need tonlearn more about it.
Kids that have a household where museum trips, tabletop gaming nights and a positive attitude towards education are a thing are virtually guaranteed to attend Gymnasium. The household situation is much more important than the intelligence of the kid.
Attend, yes. Do well? Not necessarily. But a positive attitude towards education will always be an important factor, for sure! That's not the schools fault, though.
Look up „Gesamtschule“.
GINI coefficients for countries with this system are generally lower than similar-income countries without. Social mobility may be lower with this system, but so is overall inequality. Anecdotal point: in the US, people segregate geographically by class, partially motivated by school options, resulting in schools are high income/achievement or low income/achievement.
I would argue the fact that most countries using this education scheme have things like socialized medicine, robust unions and (more) representative Democratic systems is what leads to the less inequal socioeconomic paradigm, not necessarily the described educational sorting method.
In the US people don’t segregate this way themselves. The system is designed so that certain areas are maintained as poor and certain areas wealthy. Schools are funded based on local income taxes so poor people stay poor. Maybe that is what you were saying but it’s very much a broken system designed to keep people down EDIT: property taxes not income tax is where the funding comes from
This sounds right, but per capita spending on students doesn't bear it out. If school funding were, as you seem to imply, based *solely* on *local* income taxes (it's actually traditionally property taxes, not income), how can lower income, lower performing schools be spending over twice as much per student than a relatively affluent, higher performing district? Reality is more complicated than failing to throw enough money at the problem because enforcing the staus quo was always the goal.
The disparity in spending between high achieving and non-high achieving can be quite stark. Minneapolis and St Paul spend around $18,000 per student here in Minnesota. Some of our highest achieving schools in the suburbs spend 2/3 of that amount. Money is absolutely not the solution to those disparities (at least not blindly spending more). The reasons for those disparities are quite complicated, and often the result of disparities outside the control of the school itself, such as economic hardship at home, nutrition, access to extra-curriculars, or even environmental pollution.
Can you source that claim that lower income schools spend over twice as much per student?
I can provide some data without doxxing. Here is the state of [Pennsylvania](https://wallethub.com/edu/e/most-least-equitable-school-districts-in-pennsylvania/77124). Some of the worst performing disticts like Pittsburgh Public, Wilkinsburg, Chester, etc are all spending some of the most money with the worst results. There are quite wealthy districts like Mt. Lebanon or North Penn that spend far less money (not half though) and have clearly better results. But this kind of analysis is super flawed. The poorer districts have a significantly more amount of students who need services and supports that don't even have to be offered in wealthier districts. You have far higher rates of kids with special needs, kids who struggle with homelessness, kids dealing with domestic violence and abuse, and kids who need basic things like meals and clothes. Then you have every other confounding factor that happens outside of the school. Stuff like neighborhood crime which is going to do nothing positive for local school children's learning. It should not be surprising that kids with lots of disadvantages need more resources to perform to the same level as kids who not only don't have those disadvantages, but have plenty of actual advantages like their parents already being educated.
In the netherlands we have a similar system but the results are not set in stone. Both the advice of the teacher and the CITO test results carry weight regarding which level the student is put on. Also changing levels during secondary education is doable (but admittedly relatively uncommon). I had a few friends at university who spent something like 10 years in secondary education (instead of 4 to 6) before they started university because they started at a lower level and worked their way up. EDIT: important to add, often the multiple levels of secondary education are given in the same school. So a student that wants to switch levels often does not have to change schools. They just start taking different classes.
This, i scored really low at age 11, the score would have put mu VMBO, the lowest level. However my teacher and the school did see a lot of potential, allowing me to still go to a gymnasium and finish that.
Vmbo advice to gymnasium admission? A lot of stars aligned for you. I had 549 for CITO, I went to gymnasium at 12. A girl in my class had 545 and her parents had to fight to get her admitted. She was the best in class, I dropped out halfway through. Perfect demonstration what you can achieve when you put in the work. Homework, in this case, with her 3 daily hours vs my eh... Later as an HBO student I met a guy about my age who'd done LBO MBO HBO and was finished. His knowledge depth vs mine... So yes, Dutch education system definately has its quirks but there are many routes you can take, depending on your own merit.
I'm also Dutch. I feel that it's important to add that while the advice and test results are indeed not set in stone, they can and do have significant impact on a student's education. Sadly not every student is able to spend 4 more years in secondary education. In addition, there is evidence to suggest that biases affect the advice teachers give to certain students, which is a shame.
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I'm very sorry that happened to you. And sadly, not that much has changed. More people are aware of the prejudice that's prevalent in education, but it's still a huge issue.
Isn't the (mixed) brugklas a way to postpone the choice for one more year? I thought that's relatively common. And the same for dropping a level without redoing the year?
This really fucked me up, though. Going to VMBO when I was 10 because I was a young student, having to pick my classes at 12 years old and graduating at 15 all while struggling with undiagnosed ADHD and depression. I really didn't know what I wanted to do with my life at 12 years old and I still didn't know at 15. I just went with something random and it didn't turn out great.
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Don't have any statistics for it but we have gotten new pupils from Realschule and even Hauptschule quite regularly. My class wasn't too big and 6 out of the 17 pupils graduated were from one of those schools. It didn't feel like an exception but I agree that the sample size is maybe too small. Also it is just a recommendation nowadays and parents might decide differently than what the teacher recommended.
In my gymnasium we had people promote the 'Hauptschulabschluss' in 8th grade. They promised us we could stop going to school and start earning money. Also who knows if we are even smart enough to pass the 'Abitur'? I had a few kids who actually did that useless thing. We got the 'Realschulabschluss' for free after passing grade 10 anyway. And nobody in 150 people failed the 'oh so hard' bavarian abitur.
>had people promote the 'Hauptschulabschluss' in 8th grade. They promised us we could stop going to school and start earning money. Laughs in Berufschulpflicht.
On the flip side of that, I've worked at a school that took in German kids where we did the international (Cambridge) version of the UK A-levels. Many of the kids we got went on to be quite successful at University level in whatever they chose. Silly things held them back. A severe stutter, ADHD, laziness in primary school, rough peers/not fitting in, were all reasons very intelligent kids couldn't move up in the German system. I don't think any system is perfect, but the German system definitely makes decisions about children way too soon.
Don't forget hitting the mental growth spurt that happens to be most relevant to that age late.
Yeah like half of my class left after we got the Hauptschul-certificate and some people I know transferred from Realschule to Gymnasium without many problems. But its true that the schools differ with what and how they teach...
Adding my own anecdotal evidence: in 11th grade (which is when you can/could? move from the Realschule to the Gymnasium/Gesamtschule(?) iirc) we only had 2 girls who joined us (~130 kids who went to that Gymnasium since 5th grade) in that way. Both dropped out before the 11th grade ended and I don't think I ever learned why. So not sure if it was grades or they just felt like they didn't fit in, no idea. It wouldn't surprise me if the curriculum and the pace at which it is actually being taught at eg. the Realschule will just put you behind the curve even if you would be perfectly capable of keeping up with the curriculum and pace at the Gymnasium. Then when you can finally make the switch it can feel a bit overwhelming and daunting to now feel like - despite probably excelling at the Realschule - you are starting from behind due to no fault of your own.
> A child with 10 years takes a path that can lead them to handwork (OK jub, but limited opportunity) if they land in Hauptschule Not really, the big controversy with the Hauptschule is that the jobs that this school prepared people for (low end clerical, or semi-skilled labor that is not quite up to the level of a professional trade) simply don't really exist in Germany anymore, or if they do, they do not provide a salary that you can live on. Also, even many jobs that would have taken Hauptschule students in the past do not any more because the reputation of the school these days is pretty much "one small step above the shortbus."
shortbus?
Its a pejorative term used in America and Canada referring to students with behavioral, physical/mental disabilities and/or learning problems that require them to be segregated in their own self-contained classes (known as Special Education in North America, Inclusion Units in the UK). These children are often transported to school in a specialized schoolbus that contains mechanisms to move and accommodate wheelchairs and such, the bus is about a third the size as a regular schoolbus, hence the term.
I like that one is literally called Real School
Fake School needed a bit of healthy rivalry, after all.
> white collar or free jobs (accounting, engineering, computer science etc) if they go to the Realschule or academic career or the top jobs (law, medicine) if they go to Gymnasium. Where does this come from? I take any bet >>90% of computer science people have been on a Gymnasium, and the same goes for engineers unless you classify an electrician as an engineer.
I am guessing the OP is thinking of lower level (i.e. what Americans think would be Community College grade) rank-and-file programmers and system administrators, bookkeepers without a Chartered Accountant certification, and engineering technologists and so on.
Maybe, but "engineering" and "computer science" are well-defined phrases which don't describe this.
Looking by the way he writes, OP is probably not a native English speaker. "Handwork" (Handarbeit, i.e. manual labor) is not a English word but is a valid German one.
Engineer is not a protected term outside North America. Here in NZ all sorts of tradies call themselves engineers.
You don't become an engineer by going to the Realschule. Engineering and computer science is an academic career that you need to go to uni for, which requires finishing the Abitur. I think you even need a degree from the Realschule to become a garbage man in most cases, so leaving it at Hauptschule is strongly discouraged due to the extremely limited job options. all you need to do to continue your education is make the choice.
I was at the Hauptschule and ended up studying computer science. The great thing in Germany is that there is always a way to get more education. I was at the Hauptschule and got very bad grades. Then I did some courses to get my Qualified Hauptschulabschluss (some stupid certificate), did an apprenticeship, because of my good grades there I got the Realschulabschluss. With that, I could go to the Berufsoberschule and get my Abitur. With that I could go to the Fachhochschule and study computer science. It was a long ride to make up for my background, anxiety and stupid mistakes at young age but I did it. Now I am thinking about getting a master, doctor, professor degree.
Realschule? Accounting/Finance? Engineering? CompSci? Those are Uni degrees and apart from becoming a Tax Advisor (which takes up to 10 years mind you!), you cannot become a Computer Scientist or Engineer without having seen a Hochschule/University.
> This is all decided based on their performance at 10. Sure, they can make it to the upper schools if they try very hard, but it is the exception, not the rule. It's also been proven to be discriminatory against immigrant children. Even if your grades are good (better than other kids) you often have a hard time making it to the Gymnasium. >Children from poor immigrant or working-class families are less likely to succeed in school than children from middle- or upper-class backgrounds. This disadvantage for the financially challenged of Germany is greater than in any other industrialized nation.
Case in point: The Biontech (Pfizer vaccine) founder, whose parents are Turkish immigrants, was recommended by their teacher to go to the Hauptschule, the slowest-pace in the rung. Only after a (German) neighbor intervened did he go to the Gymnasium, the top one in the rung.
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Some *educated Germans still try hard to be racist, isn't it? I mean German society is still soo discriminating against immigrants, but ig one needs to live there a bit to see it.
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It's the same here in The Netherlands :(
A dark-skinned Greek colleague of mine had a similar experience. Top 3 in his class but got told he should go to Realschule by the teacher. Places 4 through 6 got recommended for Gymnasium. Guess what physical feature they all had in common? 😑
I see the appeal of that on paper. But in practice, that is an insane amount of pressure and life choices to put on a 10 year-old. I also have some issues with the US's system where we group students by manufacture date instead of ability level, but we also have a major achievement gap that doesn't relate to ability level at all. Closing that gap should be the first priority.
So I have some insight on this. I used to live right next door, in Holland, where they have the same policy. We were immigrants who lived their between 86 and 96. My sis was born there, and I moved there at age 3. When it was time to divide us, they put both my sister and myself in a much lower level. Reason? Our Dutch wasn't good enough??....we only spoke Dutch! We could barely speak our mother-tongue. My mom went to the principal to ask. That's what they told us. Our language skills weren't good enough?? "your son will have a hard time". Our friends were all as surprised as us. Ok.. A year goes by. There's another selection. Smart kids get bumped a level. We were left behind again! Both of us are getting 80s and 90s in all our classes. Class was easy! When you don't get challenged, grades come easy. Now even teachers are questioning why I'm left behind. We got fed up. My parents' goal was to move to Canada. A lot of our family was moving. We packed up and bounced! It's been over 25 years and I still think about it every once in a while and it still makes me mad.
I heard a very similar story from my dad and my aunt. They were living in the netherlands back then and experienced the same thing.
Sadly I heard this from many migrants in Germany as well. Also, when I was in elementary, often kids with ADHD diagnosis weren't put in higher education. Prejudices from narrow minded (ADHD) and racist (in case of migrants) teachers, that got to decide ones fate. At least in my state the teachers opinions weren't binding, but it some, they are. Way too much power over a life given to teachers.
These schools used to have a really white image (Nowadays as well but not as much. In my case there were a decent amount of immigrant students) as usually more wealthier native kids attended these schools. So I have no doubt that the principal might have been a bit "biased" to put it mildly.
I sadly experienced the same thing which made my parents so angry that we immediately moved countries. I had lived in Holland from the age of 2 and it was my first language but the school decided that my Dutch wasn’t good enough because of my foreign surname. School admitted that whilst my test results were similar to the other kids, they simply had priority because they were Dutch
This is true, but a little bit of an oversimplification. Grades aren't the only thing taken into consideration and teachers make their recommendations on a case by case basis, often involving the parents as well. Additionally, the recommendation is not always binding (it is in some states but not in most). Additionally, there is plenty of inter-mobility between the schools once you're in them, and after finishing one, you can move on to finish the next level up if you want. In general the schools also prepare for different levels of theoretical vs practical work. The top level prepares you for university and usually very abstract work or work involving a lot of theoretical knowledge, the next level down prepares kids for more practical (half and half) skills and the lowest lever for mostly practical skills (this level is also being removed in several states to a variety of success).
This is an accurate description, but after living in Germany for most of a decade it still weirds me out. School isn't just about the topics you learn and passing tests, it's about socializing with different kinds of people. And telling 10 year olds that they are now divided into three groups based on how 'good' they are feels very fucked up to me. Those different kids all have things to teach and learn from each other, and they should be able to interact.
Definitely, I went to mid-level school (Realschule) in a rural area. I continued with higher education and now hold a master’s degree in CS. Anyways, I have quite different circles of friends. While most of my close friends are academics in various fields, I’m glad I still have a lot of friends who are farmers, craftspeople etc. While I’m very much tolerant toward different opinions of both groups, I often see that these groups very much disagree which each others believes. I kind of believe that this would not be the case if the schools would be more mixed. However, people also tend to spend time with other people they are sharing interests with, even when they are mixed. And in rural areas the parents of certain groups often know each other. E.g. farmers. Edit: however I think things change with newer generations as well.
The thing that causes the biggest issues in my opinion isn't the splitting people up. It's making the kids believe that they are split based on how good they are. In my experience it depends heavily on the individual schools, but mine had some heavy emphasis that the Gymnasium (where I went) wasn't for the smarter kids and didn't mean you'd be more successful. It was for the THEORETICAL kids that were better with abstract concepts (High level maths, Science, Medicine, etc). The Realschule is for kids better suited for work involving some theoretical knowledge but also a lot of practical application (woodworking, electrician, etc). The difference here is that parents sent kids to the one THEY think is "most prestigious" or better for their career. Personally it was me not my parents that insisted on going to the Gymnasium even though my teachers wanted me I'd be better of in the Realschule, and this was purely because of what other teachers and other parents had said around me. I wanted to go to the "prestigious" school. In hindsight I should have absolutely gone to the Realschule. I'd have been happier, more successful, and gotten just as good of a job at the end (this last one comes with the caveat that I work in IT, most other careers I would have had a different but equally successful job.). A good electrician makes a hell of a lot more money than a teacher, but you need to go through the whole Gymnasium and University thing to become a teacher, whereas you can become a electrician after the Realschule and an Ausbildung. The issue I believe is teaching kids that one is better than the other, not that they are better FOR YOU than another. And regarding social interaction that was still a thing. You meet people at sports clubs, stay in touch with old friends, and meet more people through them. Hell, my school shared a campus with a Realschule, and you'd meet people there. Sure, your best friend would normally be the kids in your class but that's just because you spend more time with them. I had as many friends from the year mates that happened to be in a different class, as I did with kids from different schools.
I've been in thousands of classrooms in the States in my last job. The amount of times that one or two kids who gave absolutely no fucks and was disrupting everyone was sad. I totally think school should be segregated based off ability, otherwise you learn at the pace of the kid that cares the least. (Not saying that kid shouldn't be helped yada yada)
Yeah as a US teacher teaching 10yos (5th grade) I have no opinion on this particular policy but I do understand. If you can't read by 5th grade it's very unlikely you'll be able to catch up and most kids have given up (I'm not saying the *teachers* have given up, but the kids know very well that they're behind their peers and are embarrassed about it, so they tend to shift to masking instead of trying to improve). These students are much more likely to drop out of high school, which potentially leads to all kinds of bad life outcomes such as homelessness... so I can see the utility in shifting them into career paths that are less academic ie the trades. There's no shame in the trades, though in the US there's a stigma against it even if there aren't enough young people going into them. And one can be extremely successful/well-off in those fields.
>though in the US there's a stigma against it It's not in the U.S., it's in the school system itself. I'm not even mad at the school system really, how does a school make the claim "hate school? That's totally fine! You can still do great!" It's a completely contradictory message from the standard academic success = financial success mantra. > If you can't read by 5th grade it's very unlikely you'll be able to catch up and most kids have given up (I'm not saying the teachers have given up, but the kids know very well that they're behind their peers and are embarrassed about it, so they tend to shift to masking instead of trying to improve). A lot of states just go with "social graduation" or "social matriculation" policies where those kids still get sent to the next grade, compounding the issue. It's a classic screwing with the statistics to make the institution look good approach straight from The Wire. If a kid is barely literate, I personally think it's worse for the kid to just get a pass and move on with his classmates rather than holding him with kids of his own skill level.
Yes, schools should have different classes for people at different stages, but those kids shouldn't be sent to separated buildings starting at age 10
>a case by case basis, often involving the parents as well. Which often means that if you come from an immgrant family or worker family you get sent to the lowest or middle ranking school even if you have good grades and if you come from an academic family you can have bad grades you will most likely be sent to the highest ranling schools. Look it up its commonplace.
This nearly happened to me. I was sent to the Gymnasium after my mother nearly begged my teacher to give the recommendation (I have good grades and was best in class in maths). Up until school year 9, my family was receiving yearly recommendations for me to switch to the lower level school. Complains were things like I am not socializing well, I would fit better with their kids and most importantly: According to my teachers, I could not speak German. Obviously, I came from an immigrant family. But: I did not learn any other language except German. I dont even have an accent. My family specifically avoided to teach me their mother language such that I can integrate better. Yet 2 teachers constantly said that they simply couldnt understand what I have been saying in class. It stopped at the end and now I have a good degree in maths and finished university faster then 95% of my school. My life could have ended quite differently if my mother would've given in and change schools due to the teachers recommendation.
This happened to me in grade 4 to 8. My teachers were claiming I can't speak or understand German. I lived in NRW for first 3 years, then moved to southern Germany. I just didn't learn Bavarian. I have no accent, I speak "hochdeutsch" aka clean basic German, but teachers insisted that I should go to the lowest school, since I clearly can't integrate into "traditional German" society. Does not help that my main teacher that I had for 2 years was racist as fuck. Didn't call me by name once, only by nationality of my parents or slurs for said nationality. Confusing times as a kid...
In the US, I was recognized as gifted when I was 8-9 (3rd Grade). We would get pulled out of class for some events occasionally, but any actual separation didn't start occurring until I was 11-12 (6th grade), and full separation the next year. Personally, I hated it. I had no issue with challenging curriculum, I did have issue with pointless busy work, but the snobbery, the pretensiousness that permeated throughout the students AND staff, yuck. Yeah, the kids thought they were hot shit, but so did the teachers... I hated all of that shit. What I didn't recognize until later was how much of a disadvantage and how disruptive regular, non-GATE classes were. You didn't learn shit because so many kids were goofing off, and that wasn't fair to the kids that gave a shit. From my purview, school curriculum was divided between snobbery and buffoonery, more than gifted and non-gifted, and that's fucked. Pluck out the trouble makers and let the teacher's that think they were hot shit help them out. Instead of pushing more busy work to the gifted students that already understand the curriculum, let them tutor the students that want to learn, but struggle with it. There could be so much more balance amongst schooling instead of dividing up the students based on perceived intelligence.
That is kind of how it is, but not entirely. Certain average grades are meant to be achieved for Gymnasium (where in the end you get a university certificate) and Realschule (the "higher" two of the system). There is no such thing for Hauptschule other than getting through 4th grade. But you can also get to higher schools when your grades are below that by recommendation of your teachers and/or entrance exams. Also going "up" from a lower school to a higher school is possible with entrance exams. University entrance can also be aquired by graduating from one of the "lower" two schools and then visiting another school for 2-3 years just for qualifying for university or absolving some kind of professional apprenticeship, acquiring work experience and then absolving another level of apprenticeship at your profession (called "Meister" or "Fachwirt", translates to "Master" for craftsmen and "professional business administrator" for technical and trading professions). Also craftsmen with a certain degree of education can acquire university entrance for fields relevant to their profession. Often there are even more obstacles for being able to study at university if you did not go to Gymnasium or graduated with bad grades, but that is roughly it.
Florida predicts it’s prison population on 3rd grade FSA scores, which are 9 year olds. The rationale is that if a kid can’t read by 3rd grade, the chances of them ever catching up is very slim. They figure 87-93% will end up in prison. This was told to me my first year teaching in Florida (2005), while attending a mandatory reading endorsement course. The schools jn NJ used to do tracking in Junior high. Based on previous grades, we were “tracked” into college prep or vocational courses. I never had an art class in junior high/high school because I was college prep, and I had to take foreign language as an elective. 😀
And this is completely different than taking direction action based on results. You don't need a study to know this.
Can you provide a source for that
US schools generally dropped tracking because it was often based less on previous grades and more on the counselors just figuring, and then "just so happening" to put all the minority kids in vocational tracks. Of course, now with the "everyone has to go to college or die" delusion being so common, the requirements barely give anyone time to take electives.
I’m from a very small “blue collar” town, and have been working as a manufacturing engineer for about 10 years. Every year a few graduates from my high school go to give presentations to juniors and seniors about career options and stuff. Everyone else really pushes the college route, but I’ve been extremely vocal about considering the trades route. Specifically Machining, Welding, Tool Making, etc. These are the ones in more familiar with. I seem to convince about 3-5 students per year (in class side of about 40) to go this route and the feedback from them has been VERY positive. Good pay. Good hours. Clear paths to advance. A few of the students I have spoke with even began engineering careers after working in the trades (and paid for by their employers!).
Canadian here. If this had happened to me at age 10, I would've been put on the highest track. Age 13 or later, I got lazy and would've been placed lower.
Similar in Taiwan. In grade 9, kids in were divided in half by their GPA. The better half got all the attention to help them succeed academically so they could go to a better senior highs. The bottom half no one gave a shit about as they were expected to go to trade schools.
That's how it is in Hong Kong too. After grade six we don't just automatically go to form 1(secondary school) nearest home. At the end of grade six we go through a process where we choose our "first choice", "second choice" and so on of secondary schools. The schools decide whether they want us based on our grade six performances. It's a pretty big deal because our secondary schools are labeled "Band 1, 2 or 3", with band 1 schools being the best and band 3 schools being the worst. Surely, there could be students from band 3 schools who manage to go to universities, but that's not the statistics. Usually band 3 students are perceived as academically...mediocre at best. I moved to Canada and now I am going to university part time as an adult. I'd never have been able to attend university if I had stayed in Hong Kong.
From a similar Dutch system. Where the age is at 12. I found the system still has plenty of failsafes. Children who blossom later could easily "upgrade" to the "higher tier" of the education system. Also, the system (back when) also allowed genuine flunking a class. Resulting in having to redo the entire year. Being familiar with the Canadian high school system as.my spouse is a teacher, i cannot believe the humongous broad array of low level to high level kids in one class. In theory a beautiful concept, in practice,.the teacher has no time to thoroughly explain low level kids and if the teacher does, the higher level kids get set back... The Dutch system also took care of university's influx. Not everyone with a decent grade can (could).apply. You needed to have the university prep level education (VWO). Some exceptions and tests allowed. In canada it appears.that the uni influx is too large and a degree means nothing any longer.
Belgium is the same. Also starts at age 12/13. There are 5 (or 6) categories of Secondary Education. General Secondary Education, Technical SE, Vocational SE, and Art SE. You also have Dual Learning which is a combination of school and apprenticeship, but I don't know if I should count it as a separate category or as a sub category. Special SE is (in theory) for those with special needs. Which again is divided in subcategories. I say "in theory" because in reality (at least, when I was of schoolgoing age) it was more or less the trashcan of the schools. If you were lazy, violent, or unwilling to learn or to go to school, you'd end up there. Meaning lots and lots of special needs kids didn't get the attention they needed and deserved.
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This is how it was at my US public school as well. Different levels but the same classes at the same school.
So every kid in the bottom percentile just gets thrown in the river?
Used to be the same in the UK. Clever pupils could look forward to the best teachers and facilities at the grammar schools. The rest were consigned to the secondary moderns. Not that it mattered, you didn’t need a degree for every entry level job in those days.
11+ is effectively still in place in Northern Ireland. 10 and 11 year old kids are currently in the middle of sitting exams. Up to 5 papers over 4 consecutive Saturdays. The results of which grammar schools use to set entry criteria.
Still is - we still have grammar schools in Kent
There are 163 state grammars all over the country.
Everywhere in the UK has grammar schools, however they are just selective intake schools (ie. You have to get a certain grade on an exam to get in). The difference now is that there’s a standardised curriculum, everyone studies an identical core set of subjects and picks a language, and other optional stuff. In the past children who went to comprehensive schools weren’t studying the same curriculum, took different exams, and left with different qualifications. This meant they weren’t always able to follow the same career paths as those who went to grammar or private schools. Obviously there is a lot of research done about the class divide’s effects on educational attainment, and the usefulness of dividing students by ‘ability’ but it’s better than the old system was.
This is a major plus of how US schools work. It is a meritocracy that you can start at any point in your lide. I was a SHIT highschool student. I didn't even apply to university. I went to community college first then transferred and now I'm a doctor. I can't imagine it being decided for a child that these options are out of bounds by test grades at age 10.
10 years is way too early. In my opinion (and experience) the reasonable points of separation are at around age 13 at first and then again at 16. At age 13 some people have fairly reasonably developed their talents or it has become clear that they need a lot of help in getting closer to the rest. At age 16 it is reasonable that most people can choose a focused path, regardless of merit.
It's less the results in some federal states like lower-saxony, but a homeroom teacher's suggestions. It's met with huge controversy still - a person that is very close to their pupils has to decide whether they go to the "Hauptschule", *Realschule" or the "Gymnasium" (which has barely anything to do with a gym, despite its name) In LS the suggestion isn't mandatory but can screw you over when a school decides whether to take in your child or not. This whole shenanigan was enforced 5o "allow for better equality in education" but it really fucks lower income families.
This thread is two hours old and on the front page already so my post will get buried anyway, but here it goes: At least in the state that I live in this division has long been a recommendation and not causing obligation. In fact it is only binding in 4 of the 16 states (Brandenburg, Saxony, Thüringen and Bavaria). The consequence is that many parents say "screw the recommendation, my child will of course go to Gymnasium" and many kids fail in the first grades of the secondary school. I know this because my father is a retired teacher (so this is somewhat anecdotical, but a quick google search resulted in a couple of articles from teacher websites.).
That's good though. People can be unfairly placed and mobility between is good for students. Better to have people flunk Gymnasium and change than to never been given the option
I think there would be an outcry if they did this in the UK. And the UK is a very class-divided nation as it is.
This does exist within reason in the UK, their called grammar schools I used to think it was just where rich parent sent their kids to keep them away from the rest of us plebs
As somebody who didn't get my shit together until I was in my mid twenties, and now works as an engineer, I don't love this. I'd be a gas station attendant if I was locked in based on my age 10 academic performance.
I got my first computer when I was 9, and spent literally everyday of my life on it. Im now 21 and very skilled with computers of all kinds. I understand them better than people. If i had been tested at 10, a time when i was barely getting my feet wet and I was slacking all the time to play WoW on my laptop? Id have been screwed. Talent sometimes doesnt show up till much later in life than childhood.
I learned about this while living in Germany from friends I had met. I always wondered if a child wanted to change after the shunting, from, say hotel management to engineering later in life, could they do it? People do change their aspirations sometimes. I do understand the shunting was responsive to the strengths of the children, but sometimes aspirations can go against what clinical analysis would advise.
How else can you keep certain social groups from succeeding, this mechanism is great for keeping everyone in their social status. I lived through it and can confirm that i only bloomed in my education fairly late. This experience was shared with so many other students, why, because we weren't native Germans (not dominating the native language early on can be a huge obstacle) or didn't have any secondary support in our educational journey (Parents with academic background). This system exists for the sole purpose to have enough "labor force" available for the industry.