Fourty-nine
I had a nice surprise as I walked into the staff room last Friday, and it wasn't a 50 euro note on my desk either. There was a cut-out flower silhouette pinned to the notice board with the number 49 on it. I quickly ascertained that this was the number of pupils that the school had got next year. Teachers, secretary and headmaster alike were all rightly over the moon. This was indeed good news, it means the school will be allowed to open two classes next year. My colleagues will not have to start looking for new jobs, nor pupils be shipped off to other schools, so all in all good stuff.
Readers of this in Britain (so that's pretty much all of you then!), will wonder why the hell a secondary school with only 49 new pupils is being allowed to be kept open! Well things are different here in Germany, one has to see this in the context of the German school system (I say German, it varies considerably between the different Länder), before one understands what the hell is going on.
For starters there is generally no comprehensive education system in Germany. While there are some comps in some German states, at the age of 10 after children have finished klasse 4 of primary school (the equivalent of our year 5 in age) more often than not they are sent to one of three types of secondary school, Gymansium (grammar school), Realschule,(middle ability school) and Hauptschule (secondary modern-school for the kids who really struggle), depending on their marks. In Saxony the lower two types of schools are under one rooth, and are called Mittelschule. It is generally the Gymansium kids who will go onto uni, after 8 years of secondary school (klasse 5-12), while the kids in the other types of school do 5 (Hauptschule) or 6 (Realschule), you can swap up and down, but most kids will stay where they are put.
Now leaving a debate about the merits of a comprehensive versus a selective school system (that's for a whole other post), this bi or tri school system, means that schools will naturally be smaller, although Gymansien are more the size of a british comp, the Mittelschule in Saxony aren't.
Another reason as to why the schools are smaller is that this is the country, not a buzzing metropolis, there are limits to how far you can bus pupils, so you can't simply have fewer schools per square kilometre because there are fewer pupils per square kilometre than in the cities. It may also simply be that this is just the way the school system has developed in this part of Saxony.
Now, after having worked at my school for the last six months, I happen to think that a smaller school is a good thing. Everything is so much more personal, everyone knows everybody else, there's one hell of a school ethos, not saying you don't at bigger schools, but it isn't as all-consuming, and it depends on the school, mine had one, doesn't mean all do, and it's just generally cosier. It also has the added bonus of being much more friendly and welcoming for foreign language assistants, who are then made to feel part of the school community much quicker! ;-) But alas, crude economics tend to ensure that schools have to close resulting in bigger more anonymous schools, damn those penny-pinching tax-payers ;-)
This brings me back to the school I am working at, it isn't safe forever. The local education authority seems hellbent on closing schools wherever possible, like all education authorities. But for now at least the school can look forward to another year, and hope to reach its centenary in 2008, hurrah for my school!
Readers of this in Britain (so that's pretty much all of you then!), will wonder why the hell a secondary school with only 49 new pupils is being allowed to be kept open! Well things are different here in Germany, one has to see this in the context of the German school system (I say German, it varies considerably between the different Länder), before one understands what the hell is going on.
For starters there is generally no comprehensive education system in Germany. While there are some comps in some German states, at the age of 10 after children have finished klasse 4 of primary school (the equivalent of our year 5 in age) more often than not they are sent to one of three types of secondary school, Gymansium (grammar school), Realschule,(middle ability school) and Hauptschule (secondary modern-school for the kids who really struggle), depending on their marks. In Saxony the lower two types of schools are under one rooth, and are called Mittelschule. It is generally the Gymansium kids who will go onto uni, after 8 years of secondary school (klasse 5-12), while the kids in the other types of school do 5 (Hauptschule) or 6 (Realschule), you can swap up and down, but most kids will stay where they are put.
Now leaving a debate about the merits of a comprehensive versus a selective school system (that's for a whole other post), this bi or tri school system, means that schools will naturally be smaller, although Gymansien are more the size of a british comp, the Mittelschule in Saxony aren't.
Another reason as to why the schools are smaller is that this is the country, not a buzzing metropolis, there are limits to how far you can bus pupils, so you can't simply have fewer schools per square kilometre because there are fewer pupils per square kilometre than in the cities. It may also simply be that this is just the way the school system has developed in this part of Saxony.
Now, after having worked at my school for the last six months, I happen to think that a smaller school is a good thing. Everything is so much more personal, everyone knows everybody else, there's one hell of a school ethos, not saying you don't at bigger schools, but it isn't as all-consuming, and it depends on the school, mine had one, doesn't mean all do, and it's just generally cosier. It also has the added bonus of being much more friendly and welcoming for foreign language assistants, who are then made to feel part of the school community much quicker! ;-) But alas, crude economics tend to ensure that schools have to close resulting in bigger more anonymous schools, damn those penny-pinching tax-payers ;-)
This brings me back to the school I am working at, it isn't safe forever. The local education authority seems hellbent on closing schools wherever possible, like all education authorities. But for now at least the school can look forward to another year, and hope to reach its centenary in 2008, hurrah for my school!
posted by Julien at 22:52
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