The state government led by Stephan Weil has announced a school reform – and the debate on grades and repeating a year is in full swing. In an interview, education expert Prof. Dr Klaus Zierer calls for a nuanced perspective – one that focuses on the individual pupil.
QUESTION: The state government led by Stephan Weil has announced a comprehensive school reform for Lower Saxony. The plan is to replace grades in primary schools with learning progress reports and to phase out repeating a year. As an education expert, how do you assess these initiatives?
ZIERER: Both grades and repeating a year are controversial issues and must be considered in a highly nuanced way. Any attempt to make sweeping generalisations here is reductionist and ideologically driven.
QUESTION: Let’s start with repeating a year.
To claim that grades are inherently bad and must therefore be abolished is, in my view, too simplistic.
ZIERER: First of all, a few important points on this. If repeating a class means that a pupil repeats a class without receiving appropriate support, then it makes no sense. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Similarly, it makes no sense to promote all pupils without any conditions. Here, too, support measures are necessary. Another point to bear in mind is that repeating a year is subject to systemic factors. For example, repeating a year must be viewed in the context of the type of school and the year group, and depends on the structure of the school system and how the transition is organised – key factor: parental preference. Depending on the decisions taken here, this will have an impact on whether pupils are held back.
QUESTION: And what about grades?
ZIERER: The same applies here: to claim that grades are entirely bad and should therefore be abolished is, in my view, too simplistic. Grades do have their advantages too. Furthermore, the hope that learning progress reports will solve everything is not justified in itself. A great deal of development work still needs to be done here to ensure that these learning progress reports are not merely grades put into words.
QUESTION: Do these reforms promote equality of opportunity?
The individual must be the starting point for educational measures.
ZIERER: Equal opportunities and educational equity are the key social issues in education: there can be no democracy without education for all. But here, too, a nuanced perspective is necessary in order, for example, to distinguish between egalitarian justice and distributive justice. The guiding principle must be: ‘Suum cuique’. In this respect, the individual must be the starting point for educational measures. So, not the same for everyone! With regard to repeating a year, one can conclude that there may well be cases where this is the best solution. As regards assessment, a learning progress report certainly has advantages over grades, as it can provide a more nuanced picture. But the two could also be combined.
QUESTION: Isn’t ‘doing extra work’ also an educational opportunity for pupils who have to repeat a year?
The idea of a learning culture in which everyone can achieve everything and everyone is willing to give their all may well be an inspiring one. However, it does not reflect reality.
ZIERER: As I’ve just hinted at, one should take a very nuanced view of each individual when considering this question. And it may well be that repeating a year is the better option – because too much material was missed due to illness, because the family situation was so strained that nothing went right for a whole school year, and so on. Furthermore, a new class can also have its positive aspects. In the debate about repeating a year, there is often talk of the negative stigma attached to pupils who repeat a year, whilst it is usually glossed over that those who are held back are themselves subjected to this negative stigma within their own classes. In this respect, I would like to emphasise once again: we should take a very nuanced view of each individual case. The idea of a learning culture in which everyone can achieve anything and everyone is willing to give their all may well be an inspiring one. However, it does not reflect reality. Furthermore, achieving the class target can be an important source of motivation.
QUESTION: Aren’t teachers already stretched to their limits by challenges such as inclusion?
Many of the reforms placed on teachers have no pedagogical basis.
ZIERER: Yes! And not just since the introduction of inclusion
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What image of school is currently being portrayed – and, above all, pushed by politicians: An all-day school where all children – regardless of their starting points – are taught, where there is no repeating a year, where teachers cater to all of society’s needs, and which, on top of that, is the best school in the world, and so on. No teacher can manage that. What’s more, many of these reforms, which place a burden on teachers, have no pedagogical basis. Take all-day schooling as an example: Those who argue that, for example, primary school pupils are best off spending the whole day at school are not primarily considering pedagogical arguments, but sociological and economic ones: the desire for freedom and independence is satisfied, and the economic potential of each individual is harnessed.
QUESTION: The Red-Green coalition also wants to abolish the ‘Turbo-Abitur’ at comprehensive schools, which has only just been introduced. The grammar schools themselves are to be allowed to decide freely between the eight-year (G8) and nine-year (G9) grammar school systems. How do you view this – do you see advantages or disadvantages?
ZIERER: This option strikes me as sensible, because it allows for a focus on the individual and their abilities – even though I would never have introduced the G8 myself. Education is not a race, even if there are good reasons for the economy and the national budget to view it that way.
QUESTION: In your view, what kind of resistance are the reform efforts likely to face?
My demand is: smaller class sizes – in all educational institutions.
ZIERER: These reform discussions are political. As such, there will once again be a back-and-forth between the major mainstream parties. This is tiresome because it is heavily influenced by party politics. Unfortunately, more and more educational scientists are also being drawn into one camp – which is understandable, as this opens the floodgates. But that does not serve the cause.
QUESTION: What consequences will the school reform have for undergraduate and further education at universities?
ZIERER: Hopefully not a degree programme where it’s no longer possible to fail! That would be a disaster. I fear, however, that we are once again facing a flood of reforms – which will then, after a few years of reflection, be rolled back. Take the G8, for example. It is, after all, a hallmark of our current education policy that we keep lurching back and forth. Yet we also know that structural and systemic reforms have the least impact. In that respect, it would make more sense to improve the actual working conditions on the ground. At the moment, for example, there is also a debate about class sizes, because they are supposedly of no benefit – in my view, utter nonsense. At university, I have to mark an average of 200 examination papers per semester from over 400 enrolled students. Feedback – one of the most important factors when it comes to evidence-based practice – is virtually impossible in this context. By comparison, my colleague at Oxford has twelve students over the course of an academic year. So my call would be for smaller class sizes – in all educational institutions.
