Berlin. Once again, German students performed worse in the Pisa study than in previous rounds of the international education survey. And that after the most recent Pisa study from 2022 brought historic lows for Germany.
But are the current results really evidence of a specifically German problem? Anyone who takes a closer look at data and studies and speaks to experts will realize that the thesis that the German education system is failing all around is too simple.
After the Pisa shock in 2000, Germany initially did gradually better in the subsequent Pisa results. German students increased their reading skills from 2000 to 2015. They performed better in mathematics and science at least from 2000 to 2012.
At times the Germans were able to claim at least third place among the G7 nations behind the Japanese and Canadians. This means: The story of constant failure is not true.
“Because the Pisa shock was so great and you could even see which federal states performed particularly poorly, there was an effort at all levels to gradually improve Germany,” says Ludger Wößmann, head of the research institute ifo Center for the Economics of Education, commenting on the results over time.
But after that the pressure apparently eased - and the performances weakened again. Wößmann says: “The fact that comparative PISA tests between the federal states were abolished is an example of how the focus has been lost.” In addition, in his opinion, the composition of students in German classrooms has changed over these years and politicians have had few answers to a higher migrant quota.
But the truth is also: The German decline in competence since 2015 or since 2012 has not resulted in German students being extremely left behind internationally when it comes to education. However, the reason for this is not particularly encouraging: the other G7 nations have also seen a significant decline in reading, mathematics and natural science skills. The only exception at the moment is the Japanese students.
The trend is reminiscent of a development known from intelligence tests (IQ tests) as the “reverse Flynn effect”. The original Flynn effect referred to the phenomenon in which IQ test results continually improved over the years. But in recent years, various researchers have reported that test results in some countries and among certain age groups have stagnated since the 1990s or have worsened since the 2000s or at the latest 2010s.
Klaus Zierer, educational scientist at the University of Augsburg, says about the Pisa results: “The exciting thing is that you can actually see the Pisa values falling worldwide since 2015.” Zierer sees the reason for the downward trend in digitalization. The long periods of time in front of screens have, among other things, demonstrably led to a decline in vocabulary, he says.
In contrast, other experts discuss whether such a pessimistic outlook is fundamentally justified. They see the reason for the falling IQ values, for example in recent surveys for German 15-year-olds, in the fact that classic intelligence tests measure skills that are becoming less important and, conversely, do not measure skills that are becoming more important.
While there are clear signs that vocabulary in the German population is decreasing, educational researcher Jakob Pietschnig from the Institute for Psychology of Development and Education at the University of Vienna was able to show that there is a moderate increase in the ability to concentrate. This is also why the scientist, in an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung, assumes a “sideways movement” in the intelligence of adults.
Zierer finds this basic idea justified - but it clearly contradicts the thesis. "With Pisa, too, you can ask yourself why, for example, communication skills, foreign languages and other things are not measured. All things that would measure education more comprehensively," he says.
Nevertheless, the Augsburg expert believes it is not enough to attribute the poor results purely to the measurement methods. “The mix of different measurements from IQ on the one hand and Pisa on the other shows that we are talking about a global education crisis,” he warns.
Especially when it comes to basic skills such as reading skills, it is difficult to argue why this skill should become less important in the present and future. “As long as we are of the opinion, especially in times of AI, that it is important to be able to question things critically and be creative, reading skills are required,” says Zierer.
In his opinion, Pisa does not provide evidence that the German education system in particular is particularly bad - but that the system is facing the enormous challenge of stopping the global trend towards deteriorating basic skills. In this context, Zierer emphasizes a particularly urgent task: “To do this, we have to ensure that the language level before starting school improves across the board, both for people with and without a migration background,” he says.
With regard to schools, Ifo expert Wößmann advocates a mix that at first glance seems contradictory: more autonomy for schools and at the same time more uniform examinations. “We know from research that countries often do well with an educational strategy in which there are uniform standards, but each school can decide for itself which teaching methods its students use to achieve these standards,” he says.
Aside from the discussion about reading skills, Pisa is an opportunity for scientists to also ask themselves a much more general question: What kind of education should Germany promote that also strengthens democracy and the belief in the maturity of the individual? According to Zierer's assessment, this is exactly where countries like Germany could score points against global players with autocratic political systems like China.
