Monday, March 13, 2017

The Failure Scenario

We are on this odd timetable right now in Germany....mid-March....roughly 90 days before school concludes in Germany.

Unlike the US....German school professionals have a hard and fast rule....if you fail enough classes and show lack of attention....you FAIL and redo the year.  It's not like the US where you might have 100 kids in some class group and twelve end up getting sent to summer-school and continue on their way.  In Germany, no summer-school, and you actually FAIL.

This year is a bit different from past years....for an odd reason.

You've got a fairly large and significant number of immigrant kids who entered the system in the past year.  If those kids didn't get tutor head.....or specialized educational help.....and have reached March-April time frame with bad numbers, there's not much that the teacher can do.

These school administrators are likely sitting and chatting with the teachers, and are in a bit of a stressful situation.

If some teacher were to show some favoritism and help the kid with five or six points.....they'd have to do with all the other regular kids (the non-immigrants).  Bending rules like this....normally doesn't happen.

So imagine these  school administrators having the big regional meetings in April and discussing numbers and there's some political fear/anxiety building up.  You could have 300 kids on some failure list, who are immigrants.  If this gets into the news media....how do you explain this?  Is the school responsible, or did the kids just never get enough help?

By June, you might want to watch for the stories to start appearing and observe how this is explained in remarkable but limited detail.

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