Oma is for grandma

M is starting preschool this year and yes she is very, very excited (and so are we). Nearly daily she checks the calender to see how long to go. For a few weeks now her school backpack has been one of her favourite toys. She’d frequently put it on and say “Mama, ich gehe zur Schule. Du kannst mich abholen! Tschüß!” (Mummy, I need to go to school now. You can come and pick me up when I’m finished. Bye!). She’ll trot off to the other end of the house, where her imaginary preschool is and there she’ll welcome all her imaginary friends “Hello, all my friends!”.

Unfortunately, many children her age are missing out because their parents can’t afford to send them. According to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) New South Wales (NSW) has got the lowest preschool attendance rate and the highest fees.

In Western Australia preschool is free, and in other states the cost is a fraction of the NSW charge of about $30 a day. A Productivity Commission report this year found NSW spends less than any other state on children’s services and has the lowest preschool attendance rate.

Kerry Grigg, a rural spokeswoman for Children’s Choice, said a preschool in Albury will charge $28.25 a day a next year while over the border in Wodonga the cost will be about $8.75 a day. A further inequity is the historic division in NSW between the community preschools funded by the Department of Community Services and about 100 preschools funded by the Department of Education. An Education Department preschool in Albury charges about $2 a day.

I couldn’t believe it when I read this. Unfortunately, there’s only 100 Department of Education preschools in NSW in comparison to 800 community preschools, who have to fight for their share in a tiny budget allocated to them.

The sad truth is that this non-attendance of preschool disadvantages children at school as a further SMH article describes.

Bert Oldfield Primary School, in Seven Hills, said many parents were unable to afford fees for preschool and their children had fallen behind as a result.

“Their literacy experiences in particular are very limited, which puts them behind some of their peers and certainly behind the state,” the school’s response said.

The article also states that children who didn’t attend preschool

were more likely to display social and emotional problems, difficulties with fine motor skills and lower academic standards. “Generally, the children who start school at Rouse Hill without preschool experience come with little or no sight words,” the school said.

The article finishes off by reporting on a mum who is prepared to spend $65 a day to send her son to preschool in a suburb of Sydney.

That was too much for me bear. At this point I have to agree with John Marsden, an Australian author and school founder, who said in a recent TV show that Michael and I watched that

Education is really struggling. It’s a funny thing that in Australia we claim that we value young people, we talk very beautifully about that, but we show our contempt for them by the amount of money we allocate to education, for example, by the way we structure schools. There is evidence everywhere we look, at just how little we value children. And so we talk the talk but don’t walk the walk. (emphasis not mine)

Realising that I’m not up-to-date on what’s going on “back home” (in my birthcountry) I’ve been following the news on Deutsch Welle a bit more closely.

The articles have really shocked me in the past few weeks. Though maybe that’s the aim of good reporting to focus on shortcomings and keep a country or region (or whatever the focus-point of the reporting) on it’s toes. But I’ve really been asking myself whether as an immigrant I’d choose to go to Germany with everything going on there.

Following the education discussion on my blog I was quite sadened to read that it’s official: German schools trail significantly in immigrant education. Why after so many years of educating immigrant children alongside of native kids does the German education system still not manage to support those kids properly?

The second things that has absolutely shocked me is that my home-state of Brandenburg was labelled as a racist no-go zone for people with dark skin.

Why would immigrants choose to live in Germany with all this going on? I certainly started to think that this country I’m still calling ‘home’ seems somewhat unattractive and after reading the current DW articles I’d think twice whether there might be a more hospitable place to go to.

Is it really this bad? according to this Deutsch Welle article it really is (Christina will tell me now “told you so” but hey, I need to figure it out myself).

In reference to my recent posts (the one above as well as more about the education system) about the German as well as Australian education system I read today in the above Deutsch Welle article that the problems that become apparent in the education system are really only a reflection of the German society as a whole and the ingrained divisions that are there.

I was never aware of these strong divisions and that might be partly due to factors I explained in “more about the education system” but it also leaves me with this awful feeling of possibly having grown up amongst the so-called ‘elite’. Should my world have been such a pink and rosy one?

Thank you all for your comments on the previous post (Is it really this bad?) … lots of food for thought!

I wanted to summarize what I come away with and how my understanding is shaping in reply to your comments, which might be a rather lenghthy reply. So I thought a new post might be better than a totally oversized comment.

I can see why my experience of the German education system has been a rather positive one until now and why I couldn’t understand the majority of criticism of the system. I grew up in Land Brandenburg, former East Germany, in a medium size town. When the east took on the West German education system Brandenburg was one of the only Laender that refused to start High School in year 5. Instead they decided to start High School in year 7, which is a much more reasonable age.

Also my hometown Luckenwalde never opened a Hauptschule. Instead we got a Realschule, a Gesamtschule mit gymnasialer Obertstufe and a Gymnasium and doing a Google search I couldn’t find a single Hauptschule in Land Brandenburg but quite a few Gesamtschulen all of which offer the Abitur. Which makes me think that the east must have been quite aware of the problems associated with these strong divisions and strived to be more progressive and inclusive. This quote from an article which Christina sent to me from the Economist.com describes it quite well:

Education has always been a battleground of ideas, particularly since the first Gesamtschulen (comprehensive schools) opened in the mid-1960s. Many on the left saw this type of school as a silver bullet to ensure equal opportunities for all. The right, for its part, made “Save the Gymnasium” its rallying cry. It seems to have won: only about 700 out of over 19,000 secondary schools are now Gesamtschulen.

Being a rather small town, Luckenwalde never had a great immigrant population (if any at all) which also minimizes integration problems like the ones at the Ruetli Hauptschule in Berlin or gang related crime, which is much more common in bigger cities. And I never had to face the problems of disadvantaged minority groups, cause they just weren’t around.

So my view is probably a rather sheltered one. And not having experienced a lot of what the criticism is all about, it probably makes it a bit harder for me to see the problems.

I can see that dividing and therefore labelling children so early in life can have big implications. I have to agree that the three-tiered system seems very elitist in terms of separating high achievers from low achievers, so that the “smart” kids can learn undisturbed, I suppose (don’t know why else that should be a very helpful thing to do).

Yet, from my own experience (and I do admit that this might be a very isolated case) I wouldn’t agree that children are totally stuck once divided. At the end of primary school my brother wasn’t really the studious type so he went to the Realschule. Yet within his 4 years there he really picked up and developed an interest (so did most of the other kids in his class) and hence the majority of his class, him included, went on to do their Abitur at the Gesamtschule. And he’s now doing incredibly well at Uni. So going to the Realschule has actually been quite good for him and has absolutely not limited him in his options for the future. But I do admit that I don’t know the problems associated with big city Hauptschulen and children that are forced to go to the Hauptschule especially when they might not be from a very supportive home where education isn’t valued.

I have to agree with you, Cathy, the home environment seems to have the most influence on a child’s learning and development and maybe that’s where children of immigrant or “working class” families are so severely disadvantaged in particular if they’re not given the option of learning together with children from privileged homes. Which made me think that this is really what it all comes down to: failure to properly integrate children from all backgrounds into one society and education system rather than separating them into two or even three classes.

Primary schools seem to be OK. because the separation doesn’t start until High School. That’s certainly the case in Germany and in Australia many people are happy enough with the public Primary Schools but start sending their children to Private Schools once they start High School. And I do remember that it was quite common in England (I lived there for 7 months) to send children to Private Schools right from the start, which might explain the poor public education even in Primary School. Would you agree with that, Mr. Haddock?

Yet, in High School the problems start as children are divided into a class society. In Australia the privileged kids tend to go to the private schools and in Germany it’s the Gymnasium. What you’re left with are plenty of children from underpriviledged families not being able to mix with and learn together with children who are better off.

Hopefully, with the criticism of the PISA study Gesamtschulen will be on the increase assisting the integration of all students into one society.

Sorry, now it’s turned from an oversized comment into an oversized post but I need to ramble before I work something out, so if I’ve bored you to death I’m very sorry but at least I’m a bit more certain now of what I’m thinking. And if you haven’t fallen of your chair by now, thanks for bearing with me.

Reading Christina’s blog has shocked me from time to time.

No, she doesn’t write anything obscene but reports about the German school system and its shortcomings and the poor ranking Germany got in the PISA study as well as Vernor Munoz’s critic of the German School system. Being a German myself I’m quite distressed to read that Germany is amongst the lowest ranking countries in the PISA study. And I really would like to make sense of all of this. Is Germany’s school system really this bad or is the PISA study not all that accurate when it comes to the results and how they’ve been interpreted?

I have always had quite a high opinion of the German education system which makes what I read even more distressing. I’m sure that my opinion is based on my own positive experiences at school. Maybe this is much more typical for a girl than a boy, but I’ve always enjoyed school. Also I have always been to good schools with a high standard. So my view is possibly totally biased but I don’t really want to believe that the entire school system in Germany is doomed.

Well here are some of my questions and uncertainties. Maybe you can help me to find an answer to some of them.

The PISA study tests 15-year olds performance but I’m wondering whether countries where students start school later are automatically disadvantaged. At 15 years Germany’s students will only be in year 9 but Australia’s in year 10.

Vernor Munoz (as well as Christina) critizise the early start of High School and therefore the separation into different achievement levels. When I went to school (and maybe this has just changed since then) only the CDU-run states started High School in year 5 but all SPD-run states’ students didn’t start High School until year 7. Shouldn’t this criticism only be directed at the CDU-run states?

According to the ranking Australia did very well in the PISA study but I have my own doubts about the school system here and until now would have always preferred Germany’s.

Quite a large percentage of students here go to private schools with incredibly high fees. Is that a reflecion of the good results? If German parents payed a similar amount to Australian parents for their children’s education would they receive a better education for their children (or better results in PISA at least)?

And in regards to the PISA findings that children of Academics are much more likely to go to a Gymnasium in Germany what does that say about the rich and the poor in Australia? Michael has written a post about that if you’re interested to find out: the rich, the poor and public education.

I am really quite confused about this whole issue. Maybe you’ve got something worthwhile to add or enlighten me.