- Статьи
- World
- Idiocracy is coming: the quality of secondary education in Germany is rapidly declining
Idiocracy is coming: the quality of secondary education in Germany is rapidly declining
Experts note a rapid decline in the level of knowledge of German schoolchildren. A government report has documented an alarming paradox: education costs in Germany are rising, while students' knowledge is declining — and the situation is particularly bad with mathematics. This happened due to a number of reasons. The main problem is social stratification — students from poor families initially come to schools with low knowledge, and then it only gets worse. Details can be found in the Izvestia article.
Division will be studied only in the fifth grade.
The other day, Federal Minister of Education Karin Prin (Christian Democratic Union) presented in Berlin Bildung in Deutschland 2026, a report on the current state of education in Germany. According to Prin, this document, prepared by a group of scientists under the auspices of the Leibniz Institute for Educational Research (DIPF), has become the most alarming in the entire 20-year history of observations. In 2025, €305 billion was spent on education in Germany. However, this amount of investment has not led to an improvement in results — on the contrary, students' knowledge is deteriorating. "Too many young people are not achieving basic competence goals," says Kai Maaz, co—author of the report from DIPF. According to him, this indicates "long-term structural problems of the system."
The worst situation is with mathematics. In 2024, 24% of German students did not achieve even minimal knowledge in this subject. For comparison, in 2012, this figure was only 16%. The Ministry of Education was particularly concerned that the problems were not limited to regular schools. According to the authors of the report, the drop in results is observed at all educational levels, including gymnasiums. That is, even students who are pre-oriented towards higher education show a consistent decline in mathematical skills.
There is also a regional disparity: while 12% of students in Bavaria do not reach the minimum level of mathematical knowledge, in Bremen this figure reached 34.1%, in Berlin — 30.6%, in North Rhine—Westphalia — 30.2%. The former head of the German Teachers' Union, Josef Kraus, called what was happening a mathematical disaster. He identified three key reasons for this degradation. First, in many federal states, the requirements for basic skills of students are decreasing. The events in Lower Saxony turned out to be significant in this regard, where the local regional Ministry of Education decided to transfer the study of written division (i.e. column division) by schoolchildren from the fourth to the fifth grade.
The ministry explained this decision with the desire to provide "understanding instead of mechanical memorization." They note that although many children are able to use the written division algorithm, they do not understand its essence. The Minister of Education of Lower Saxony, Julia Willy Hamburg (Green Party), stressed that "children often learn the algorithm automatically, but do not realize why and how it works, which leads to mistakes." According to her, the introduction of this method too early, when the basic skills of multiplication, subtraction and oral counting have not yet been fixed, leads to students performing the process of division into columns mechanically, without understanding it. Supporters of the reform believe that transferring the study of written division to the fifth grade "will lay a stronger foundation for children to study mathematics in the future."
However, the decision caused a flurry of criticism from many professional and public organizations. Teachers' associations consider it erroneous. In their opinion, writing teaches children "careful, formal mental work," the simultaneous application of several previously learned skills, and provides students with important cognitive experience. The political opposition (the Christian Democratic Union, the Free Democratic Party), as well as employers' organizations, also sharply criticized the abolition of written division in the fourth grade, calling it a reduction in requirements and a solution from Absurdism. They fear that this will worsen the already alarming shortage of basic mathematical knowledge among school graduates. Critics warn that transferring this topic to the fifth grade may create problems at the next stage of education, as children there will have to catch up on what has not been studied before.
Excessive love for the "Iishnitsa" leads to stupefaction
The so-called digital erosion of thinking has become another problem for most German schoolchildren. More and more schoolchildren prefer to solve mathematical problems using artificial intelligence, abandoning oral and written counting. In fact, technologies designed to facilitate cognition turn into a tool for its destruction: neural networks take over the mental work, preventing the brain from developing the necessary neural connections. It is estimated that in Germany, almost two thirds (65%) of students aged 12-19 use AI when working on homework.
At the same time, schools do not have uniform rules regarding the use of AI, and in 27% of educational institutions it is not regulated at all. As a result, the time that high school students spend on assignments decreased by 31.3%. But when the same students are given supervised control tasks (that is, without access to AI), the probability of their successful completion drops by 25%. This phenomenon is called the "crutch effect" or "cognitive surrender": a student gets used to shifting mental work to a machine and loses the ability to cope with tasks on their own.
Martin Korte, a German neuroscientist, explains that the human brain works according to the "use it or lose it" principle. Certain functions must be constantly trained, otherwise they will atrophy. When a student transfers the solution of a mathematical problem to a neural network, his brain does not make cognitive effort — the very tension that is necessary for the formation of new neural connections. Instead, he gets a ready response. If this is repeated day after day, the areas of the cortex responsible for mathematical thinking, logic and concentration gradually weaken. There is an effect that has been well studied using the example of car navigators: when people stopped remembering routes and relying on landmarks, their spatial memory deteriorated.
The uncontrolled use of AI in schools poses great risks. Teachers are sounding the alarm: students who are used to the help of neural networks are losing the ability to think independently, without relying on electronic prompts. Weak students are especially vulnerable — they are the ones who most often shift their thinking to the machine. As a result, the gap between strong and weak students is growing. In schools where there are no clear rules and pedagogical support, AI becomes a factor that deepens this inequality. "Students who do their homework through a neural network discover in exams that they don't know anything," the German Ministry of Education states.
If you study for two grades, you'll become a loader!
However, the main problem of the German school system is not the widespread use of artificial intelligence. The key conclusion of the report is simple: educational success in Germany is still determined by social origin. Minister Prin called this phenomenon educational scissors. According to her, these "scissors open from birth, continue to expand until they enter school, and then practically do not close." The numbers confirm her words. In 2024, every fourth child in Germany was affected by at least one risk factor — the threat of poverty, low qualifications, or parental unemployment. Among children with an immigration background, this figure reached 54%, while among children without a migration background it was only 14%. The researchers state that over the past 20 years, the education system in Germany has not been able to make significant progress in bridging this gap.
The mechanism of reproduction of inequality is simple. Only 20% of children from families with low social and educational levels attend preschool institutions, while among children from well-off families this figure is 39%. Such a gap lays the foundation for inequality long before the first bell rings. If a child comes to school without any knowledge at all, he obviously loses the competition to a peer who has already been taught something in kindergarten. It is very difficult to overcome this gap — as a rule, it only increases in the future. As a result, in addition to problems with mathematics, the Bildung in Deutschland 2026 report records a decline in German students' academic performance in other subjects. At the same time, the number of young people leaving school without a certificate is growing — 8%. This means that almost every 12th graduate enters adulthood without formal qualifications.
Federal Education Minister Karin Prin called for "systemic changes that go beyond targeted programs." She insists on increasing attention to preschool education, emphasizing that the key period for development is the age from birth to three years. However, the German educational system is already overloaded with numerous initiatives. In the period 2024-2026 alone, the federal states have launched 347 measures to reduce educational inequality, and the federal center has launched 13 more. However, as the authors of the report note, these measures lack coordination.
The fate of those who leave German schools without a certificate or with very poor results is usually predetermined. Lack of education is, as a rule, a pass into the ranks of the unemployed. As of the beginning of 2026, two out of three German unemployed people under the age of 25 do not have completed professional education. Even those of them who manage to find a job are often not to be envied. Their choice of professions is catastrophically small and limited to unskilled jobs with no prospects for career growth and training. At the same time, 55 or more people apply for one vacancy for unskilled workers in some regions. As a result, for people without education, the labor market becomes a field of fierce competition with minimal chances of success.
Currently, about 2.86 million people under the age of 35 have no education in Germany and have to settle for low-skilled work. By the way, about 60% of them are immigrants, which indicates problems with integration in Germany. Social isolation and the prospect of living on benefits are always associated with an increased risk of falling into a criminal environment. When all legal doors are closed in front of a young man, and there is no money in his pocket, the criminal world may seem to be the only available way out. It is no coincidence that migrant criminals are now rampant in all regions of Germany, robbing, raping and killing law-abiding burghers.
Natalia Eremina, Doctor of Political Sciences, Professor at St. Petersburg State University, in an interview with Izvestia, noted that the Bildung in Deutschland 2026 report paints a picture of a system that spends more and achieves less. "Previously, the German educational system was the leader in quality in the EU. And now cash injections do not save from a drop in academic performance, an increase in the number of students without a certificate and the continuing social gap between them. The "educational scissors" cut to the quick, dividing children into successful and laggards even before they sit down at their desks. And while the federal states are launching hundreds of individual programs, the system as a whole is stalling, unable to reverse the trend of stupefaction," says the expert.
According to her, the problem also lies in the fact that German teachers are overloaded with the need to compile a huge number of often meaningless reports — and this bureaucratic burden kills creativity. "Life in Germany is noticeably changing for the worse, which is why society is overwhelmed by massive stresses affecting teachers, students, and their parents. One cannot expect to maintain a high level of education when the standard of living in general is falling. An additional negative factor is the presence of a huge number of migrant children in German schools, which forces schools to adapt to the weakest rather than the strongest students," Eremina notes.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
