A new educational monitoring report reveals that in Germany, educational opportunities are heavily determined by both a person’s social background and their gender. These findings were presented in Berlin by the Ifo Institute and the organization “A Heart for Children”.
Ludger Wößmann, head of the Ifo Center for Educational Economics, stated that their analysis demonstrates how significantly the chance of attending a Gymnasium (upper secondary school) is shaped by parental education and family income. According to the data, the probability of attending a Gymnasium drops to just 16.9 percent for the most disadvantaged social group, compared to 80.3 percent for those from the most privileged backgrounds.
The research also highlights a concerning gender disparity: Ifo researcher Vera Freundl noted that boys systematically have lower educational chances than girls. While 43.5 percent of girls attend a Gymnasium, only 36.9 percent of boys do-a gap of 6.6 percentage points persists across all social strata. However, this gender gap is smaller among boys in the highest educational and income brackets. Critically, this gap widens during schooling, reaching 9.6 percentage points for adolescents aged 16 to 18. Sarah Majorczyk, Chairwoman of “A Heart for Children” summarized the impact by noting that the new monitor documents a multi-layered inequality in educational opportunities.
The study utilizes data from nearly 68,000 children and youths aged ten to eighteen, collected through the 2022 microcensus-Germany’s largest household survey. A family’s background is assessed based on the parents’ educational level, household income, migration background, and whether the family is headed by a single parent.
The Ifo researchers issued several recommendations aimed at boosting educational chances for socially disadvantaged groups. These include expanding early childhood education programs, strengthening family support systems, ensuring that disadvantaged schools have access to high-quality teachers, increasing free tutoring programs, delaying the age at which children are sorted into different school types, and implementing more mentoring programs.
Furthermore, specific recommendations were put forward to improve opportunities for boys. These suggestions include having more male counselors and educators, paying greater attention to gender stereotypes in teaching and parenting, promoting reading skills and self-regulation in boys at an earlier age, increasing parent involvement, and providing extracurricular support to foster their educational ambitions.