After attending the Grundschule (elementary school) for 4 years, the students have to decide which of three possible ways they want to go. Well, very often it’s not the students’ decision but the teachers’ or parents’. However, students can influence this decision by their grades and behaviour.

Let’s talk about die Hauptschule first. It offers the lowest of secondary education in Germany and concentrates more on getting students ready for the workforce than for a college or university degree. Therefore the focus on academic studies is low and subjects are taught at a much slower pace. Students attend die Hauptschule from 5th to 9th grade before graduating by passing the so-called “Quali” tests (der Hauptschulabschluss = CSE). Then they will hopefully get an apprenticeship position in a job that requires practical skills.

Die Hauptschule has become something like a “storage room” for kids living in problematic social environments. The general stereotype is that students who attend die Hauptschule are hard to handle and come from low class families that e.g. deal with unemployment problems, drug/alcohol abuse, domestic violence or have a different cultural background. Due to this bad reputation (which unfortunately does come from somewhere) their chances on finding a good job after school are slim.

Starting this year, some German Federal States have decided to abolish die Hauptschule and to merge it with die Realschule about which I’m going to talk in my next post Germany’s school system.