Back to school: Germany's botched high school reform

The German school system was strictly tiered, making it inflexible and a means to promote "class" - not in the sense of excellence but in the sense of a social class structure.

Depending on how you count, Germany had something like three to five different versions of what Americans call "middle school" + "high school", and not a single one of these was an all day version. Some West German states introduced an "integrated high school", which simply translates into "high school" (or, to be exact) middle school + high school. This integrated school was hated by staunch conservatives because it showed that children from less privileged families can learn in the same room as offspring from "better" homes. However, since saying this out loud was frowned upon, the worries expressed were all about a feared decline of the quality of education.

The version that opened the gates to college was nine years long in West Germany and eight in East Germany. Then East Germany went away but the new states kept the eight year system.

Finally, around the year 2000, lots of conservative politicians proclaimed that the German school system was robbing the country's youth of valuable time in the workplace compared to their European counterparts.

Whatever logic these people may have seen in such a grossly f***ed up train of thought, it worked.  Most formerly West German states decreed that eight years was the future.

No cuts to the curriculum, of course, so school days became longer.

No longer would German high schoolers be let out at just past 1 PM unless you had some esoteric electives later.

Those same governments that lobbed a year off of the total time in school did not want to spend money on making German high school a full day venture. 

Who needs a cafeteria that serves lunch when you can volunteer stay at home moms to come in and prepare sandwiches or send the au-pair over to do the job?

Teachers' efforts to adapt were not supported by the states either.

Long story short: school is getting longer again in most of these Western German states. Many are returning to the nine year model, thus wasting a great opportunity for a full-day school which would allow more mothers to take a full-time job without bringing up a latch-key child.

The tiered system continues to be alive and well in most states, continuing to short change German "working class" students and, as recent studies have shown, children of poorer migrants.