EDUCATION SPECIAL

The German approach

Not enough children

Mary Kenny

13 ritish schoolteachers often compare themselves unfavourably with their con- tinental counterparts. Look at the remun- eration offered in the new Kenneth Baker deal — considered to be extremely gener- ous by the Government — and compare it to West Germany. In Britain, an honours graduate will now get a starting salary of 5-8500 a year, rising to £10,000 after three years. A teacher aged 45, head of depart- ment in a secondary school in a city area will earn an average salary of £14,300. But in West Germany, a young teacher starting out will earn about £13,500 a year, while a 45-year-old teacher working in a secondary school in a city area, will earn around £24,000 a year — which includes a 13th month of salary at Christmas and a holiday bonus in July. He may also qualify for a rate rebate from his local municipal- ity, and has a certain amount of flexibility In taxation. On retirement, his pension will be 75 per cent of his last income.

Small wonder that British teachers envy the continentals.

On the other hand, the British Educa- tion Minister — and British parents — also have cause to wish for certain continental benefits in education. Teachers in West Germany are forbidden to strike — they are civil servants and, very sensibly, no civil servants may engage in strike action in the Federal Republic. They are also barred from engaging in overt political activity or Political propagandising on the job. Who would not think it a good bargain to pay teachers a lot more in return for a strike- free profession and an end to political shenanigans in the schools? Think of the pure joy of a school curriculum in which accusations about 'racism' were declared out of bounds, in which the horrors of Haringey — where children must be taught about gay rights — didn't exist, and in which parents could look forward to unin- terrupted education for their children?

German education, however, is not without its problems, and the main prob- lem is a common one all over Western Europe: the disastrous fall in the birth rate and the consequent dramatic decline in the number of schoolchildren. Partly, perhaps, because of their high salaries, the West Germans are all but refusing to have children.

The birth rate is well below replacement level, at 0.7 children per couple, and this phenomenon is widely blamed on a com- fortable lifestyle. 'Look, if a married cou- ple are earning £45,000, they can have a very pleasant life together,' reflects a spokesman for the Bonn government. `They can enjoy their holidays, off to Italy and Yugoslavia, skiing — with one child fitting in fairly easily. But why would they be bothered with a larger family? Old age is financially taken care of, and there is not much sweetness in the role of grandparent for Germans today.' In consequence of this, schools are closing and the numbers of children attending the schools which re- main open are diminishing.

For example, one Gymnasium — gram- mar school — in central Dusseldorf had 1,100 pupils five years ago, and now has 800. Another, in a suburb of the city, also had 1,100 children five years ago, and now has 875. Yet the Gymnasium is the most admired form of education in West Ger- many — over half of all parents would like their children to go to a grammar school. But still, such schools are closing. The children just aren't there.

Following the law of supply and de- mand, the reduction in the numbers of children has meant fiercer competition among the schools for the children that do exist. The number of teachers in any given school is determined by the number of pupils — the average teacher-pupil ratio in North-Rhine Westphalia, West Ger- many's biggest province, is 21.5 — so that the livelihood of teachers depends very materially on the numbers of children available.

Although North-Rhine Westphalia has had a socialist government for over 20 years now, there is a commitment to com- petition among the schools which again British parents would envy; for inevi- tably the sense of competition makes every school try harder. Schools draw attention to their success and allure with open days, and some schools have had to be stopped from offering free gifts as an incentive to attract pupils.

Education seems, to the outsider, very strongly based on career specialisation from an early age. Parents have four choices of secondary school. Where the

EDUCATION SPECIAL

British have a class-system, others have a career-system; you are graded and groomed for the kind of work you are likely to do. The secondary schools define these aims without any self-conscious feel- ing of divisiveness. There is the grammar school, the Gymnasium, designed to pro- duce academics and professionals; the secondary-technical, the Realschule, which is supposed to produce clerks and white- collar workers; the secondary-modern, the Hauptschule, which is expected to turn out skilled workers, and there is a small number of comprehensives, the Gestamt- schule. These were conceived, as in Bri- tain, to cater for all abilities and to offer a wide range of opportunities. But compre- hensive education remains marginal in West Germany, even in socialist North- Rhine, where it has the Government's strong encouragement and blessing; only 8.4 per cent of children go to a Gesamt- schule. Recent moves by the provincial government to force the pace of compre- hensivisation created a furore, and there was subsequently an undertaking given that there would be no coercion in this area of education.

The Gesamtschule that I visited in Dus- seldorf recently was large, cheerful, utilita- rian in construction, but beautifully equip- ped. It featured a bigger than usual group of immigrant children from Turkey and Greece, and graffiti on one of the outside walls indicating that the influence of Brit- ish football fans had not been ignored (Tuck off Kilroy'). Yet the attitude of the deputy head of this comprehensive was, well, still fairly German. There was still an underlying commitment to a certain level of discipline. Comprehensive education was good, he said, where it gave children wider choices of subjects, and the mixture of children could help young people to- wards 'social tolerance'. But 'pupils must be well-controlled by their teachers'• and if they did not reach required standards, they had to repeat. Sexism was not noticeably frowned upon either. 'The girls want to have families, and they are creative in the arts,' he said approvingly. In anti-natalist West Germany, maybe girls wanting fami- lies is considered a novelty.

This comprehensive, which is called Kik- weg and is twinned with a comprehensive school in Reading, had successfully attracted over 2,000 pupils. Comprehen- sive education does suit some children and the fluid atmosphere is right for some teachers, too. But even this spokesman for Kikweg, Dieter Smolka, insisted that pa- rents must have the choice of whether they wanted to send their children to compre- hensives. 'The competition between the schools for children is very good,' he insisted. Now if comprehensive schools had been introduced in Britain alongside grammar and technical schools, there would be no objection. It is the coercive element, the lack of choice, that British parents complain about.

However, grammar school teachers and parents — in West Germany do say that it is important to insist on keeping parental choice open, and that you have to be vigilant about it. 'The provincial gov- ernment does its best to manipulate the situation so as to push comprehensive schools, possibly at the expense of other schools,' says a Gymnasium teacher. 'You really have to go on showing the politicians that parents want this choice.'

Specialisation is still, it seems, a prized concept in West Germany. There is such an old and honoured tradition of appren- ticeship, such a respect, still, for the skilled worker who is a master in his own trade, that the notion of an education system geared towards apprenticeships for some and university education for others does not seem repellent to them. Besides, pupils can change in mid-stream, and educational selection is not coercive; if a parent insists that this child go to the grammar school, he can perfectly well go there. (Entry is normally by assessment, but the parent can have the final say.) However, the stan- dards at the top of the grammar school are so high that no parent — it seems to me would humiliate his child by forcing him into a level for which he was not fitted. I sat at the back of an English class of 18-year-olds at the Annette von DrOste Gymnasium just outside Dusseldorf city and listened to them discussing their work — reflecting on Wordsworth's two poems; `Upon Westminster Bridge' and 'The Daf- fodils'. Casually dressed — they all wore jeans — the youngsters followed the entire period in English, firmly but informally led by their teacher, Ferdi Picker. 'Word- sworth describes the city at a special moment and he describes his feelings of it,' said Annabelle, the daughter of Portu- guese immigrants. 'He is so impressed by the city that his thoughts are uncontrolled. The general impression that you get from the words are an atmosphere of quietness and calm. The adjectives express beauty and positive emotions and this shows the great love that he has for the city. In his opinion it is impossible to be untouched by the power of these emotions.' Moving on to 'The Daffodils', Tanya, another girl, offered her reactions. 'The atmosphere and mood is sort of above everything lonely as a cloud. "I saw a crowd" stands in contrast to "lonely".' Over 33 per cent of school-goers in this part of Germany attend the grammar school. And this is the sort of standard they are reaching. I wonder how many sixth- formers in the United Kingdom have reached comparable standards in French or German?

There is a group of radical young teachers in West Germany who believe that they should rather follow the British example; that they should be free to strike and that they should press for a wider degree of comprehensivisation. They form a minority trade union which argues for the integration of the different forms of secon- dary schools, and for the abolition of selection and 'elitism'. This union, GEW, also wants shorter hours for schoolteachers they claim teachers work an average of 46 hours a week. Yet realistically, they perceive the fundamental weakness in their position; fewer and fewer children mean that teachers are in surplus — there are 90,000 unemployed teachers in the Federal Republic, they claim. It seems likely that parental choice will remain the keynote in German education.

As for the teachers themselves, even the Greenest-voting, most radical of them may yet come to think that the Pope's views on birth control are not entirely without justi- fication.