Editor’s Note
This article examines the critical transition from primary to secondary education, highlighting how parental educational background remains a key determinant in school choice—a factor that can significantly shape a child’s future academic and life trajectory.
The transition to secondary education is a pivotal decision point in an individual’s educational biography. Which type of school a child attends after primary school depends heavily on the educational attainment of their parents.
In hardly any other OECD country is a child’s educational success as dependent on their family background as in Germany – as international comparative studies like PISA and PIRLS have repeatedly shown. A particularly consequential moment in the educational careers of young people is the transition from primary school to the various types of secondary schools (Hauptschule, Realschule, Gymnasium, comprehensive school, etc.). This is where the course for the further educational path is set. In most German states, this transition occurs after the fourth grade, which is a very early point in the educational biography by international comparison. Primary schools have very little time to compensate for learning deficits of children from less privileged family backgrounds.
If a child’s origin no longer played a role in the transition to secondary education, the distribution of students across school types should be roughly equal for all family backgrounds. This is obviously not the case. Rather, the type of school a child attends after primary school depends strongly on the parents’ educational level: Children of parents with a university entrance qualification (Abitur) most frequently attend a Gymnasium after primary school (61.7 percent), children of parents with an intermediate school-leaving certificate (Mittlere Reife) most frequently attend a Realschule (48.8 percent), and children of parents with a Hauptschule certificate or no school-leaving certificate most frequently attend a Hauptschule (38.3 and 42.7 percent, respectively). Thus, most students attend the same type of school their parents attended. This means: In our school system, education is “inherited” to a considerable extent.
However, a considerable proportion of students also manage to jump to a higher school type: Over 34 percent of children of parents with a Hauptschule certificate attend a Realschule, and almost 30 percent of children of parents with an intermediate school-leaving certificate attend a Gymnasium.