The Kettelerschule, a primary school located in the northern part of the western German city of Bonn, is not in a wealthy neighborhood. Nearly all of the 250 students come from families who have migrated to Germany within a generation. Many do not speak German at home. One in three students requires individualized support. However, the school has consistently scored above average on achievement tests in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Germany’s two-tier educational system sorts children into a university track or trade-school track by the time the reach their teens. At the Kettelerschule percentage of students who transfer to university-track institutions after four years of elementary school has risen from 0.5% to 30% in the past 20 years.
A major part of this success is Christiane Lang-Winter, who joined the Kettelerschule as a young teacher in 2004, rose to become principal and began “turning everything upside down.”
“It became clear to me pretty quickly that either I would leave or the school would have to change,” Lang-Winter told DW. “I want our children to be able to learn everything here so that later on they’ll have the same opportunities as children from families where kids are given plenty of opportunities right from the start.”
As one of her first official acts, Lang-Winter implemented a system of teaching students grouped into “learning families” that span multiple grade levels. This means that 6- and 9-year-olds learn together and support one another.
Lang-Winter’s team of teachers, social workers and special-needs educators has prioritized reading, especially for first-graders. “We need high-quality language support for all children living in this country so that they can speak German really well,” Lang-Winter said. “Otherwise, education won’t work: If I don’t have language, I can’t be educated.”
The Kettelerschule works closely with nearby day cares. On Mondays and Wednesdays, preschoolers visit the Kettelerschule for 90 minutes. Kids from the elementary school visit the day cares to read aloud to the smaller children. “I want to know everything I can about these children beforehand so I can support them as early as possible,” Lang-Winter said.
‘The educational gap’
According to Germany’s national report on education, success at school is largely predetermined by students’ social backgrounds, especially their parents’ income and level of education.
A UNICEF study ranks Germany 20th out of 43 developed countries when it comes to math and reading skills for 15-year-olds. Teenagers from socially disadvantaged families are five times more likely than their privileged peers to fail to meet the minimum standards in reading. The consequences are dire: The proportion of young people in Germany who leave school without a diploma has risen to 8%.
German Education Minister Karin Prien is alarmed. She told the German public broadcaster ARD that such problems arise well before children start school. “What we’re seeing now is that the educational gap essentially begins at birth, widens by age 6 and then doesn’t narrow again,” Prien said. “Children need to learn German in day care and receive better support for their other developmental deficits.” Before the parliament goes into its summer recess, she plans to introduce legislation that would established nationwide standards.
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Widening educational gap
The BSK federal student conference has long called attention to the lack of equal opportunity in the German education system. “Education should not depend on social background, a family’s financial means or where one lives,” the organization’s press coordinator, Isabelle Seltenreich, wrote in an email to DW.
Seltenreich wrote that the BSK is calling for targeted long-term support for schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods, better staffing and resources, smaller class sizes, and multidisciplinary teams that comprise social workers and psychologists. Equally important, she wrote, is the expansion of individualized support.
“Schools must be able to accommodate different learning needs and support every student as best as possible, rather than further exacerbating existing disparities,” Seltenreich wrote. “No student should fall through the cracks in the system.”
Flawed education system
Silke Müller, who taught for 16 years, takes the German education system to task in her 2026 book: “Schule Gegen Kinder” (School Against Children).
Germany is failing to provide equal opportunities for children and young people, Müller told DW. The system isn’t designed to support every child equally; instead, she said, it depends entirely on which people students happen to encounter in their educational environment.
Müller said an ideal school “would have to be designed from the children’s perspective: Learning would no longer be organized into separate classes and subjects — and it would focus on developing skills.” She said schools should abandon the fixation on grades and focus on personal development.
No real debate
Almost nothing has changed in Germany’s approach to education over the past 30 years, said Bob Blume, a former teacher who has nearly 240,000 followers on Instagram.
Blume said the question of how to effectively educate students was not even asked anymore because there is no easy answer. Instead, the debate focuses on certain aspects. “It’s all about smartphone bans, smartphone bans and smartphone bans,” Blume said. “And maybe a social media ban, as well.”
Prien recently said education was the “crucial issue for our nation.” Blume agrees with the education minister, but, he said, that has not been reflected in the priorities of recent governments.
“When you conduct surveys on political issues, education almost always ranks in the top three,” Blume said. “But that’s not reflected in reality. I’d even go so far as to say that a truly substantial debate on education hasn’t even started in Germany.”
This article was originally written in German.
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