http://www.iht.com/articles/85972.htmlGermany has emerged as an academic underachiever in a succession of studies released over the last 14 months by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, showed that German 15-year-olds came in 21st among those in the 32 leading industrial nations, well behind Britain, Japan, South Korea and much of Continental Europe. Worse, German students scored "significantly below the OECD average" in all three of the disciplines studied: reading literacy, mathematics and science.
American teenagers rank higher than the Germans in all three subjects despite studies that found one in 10 young Americans cannot find his country on a blank map of the world.
"Nobody knew" about Germany's slippage, explained Andreas Schleicher, who carried out the study. "There is no central examination system, there is no way of knowing what the system actually delivers and so no one really worried."
http://www.iht.com/ihtsearch.php?id=105244&owner=(The%20Associated%20Press)&date=20030805132818
FRANKFURT: It sounds like every child's dream: only four and a half hours of school a day, no attendance taken, a free day if a teacher is sick, no punishment for playing hooky.
But this is no dream, as Germans have suddenly awakened to discover; it is the sorry state of their schools.
Germany's education system, like its economy, was once considered the pride of Europe. Worries about the stagnating economy have recently preoccupied Germans, and now they are realizing that their schools are also in trouble.
Things are so bad that it is not only parents who are complaining. High school students grumble that it is hard to take school seriously.