Covid Aftershocks: Record Numbers of Students Don't Graduate from School

Blame 'the pandemic' and whatever socioeconomic preexisting conditions, but never call of politicos™, experts™, and journos™

More evidence about the disastrous consequences of the political and expert™ decisions during the Covid shitshow—nothing has happened yet.

About the author of the below piece:

Ada M. Hipp, born in 1968, lives with her family in Berlin. She has been working in the Berlin school system since 1992. She wrote about her experiences and those of her students during the school closures in her book Ich und du, Schule zu und digital im Nu [Me and You, School’s Closed and Went Digital Fast], published by Novum-Verlag epubli.

Disclosure notice: The author uses a pseudonym; her real name is known to the editors.

Translation, emphases, and [snark] mine.

---

The Long Arm of the Coronavirus Pandemic: More Students Fail to Graduate Than Ever Before

The pandemic and the associated lockdowns have further exacerbated the education problem. This can be seen in the final exams at a school in Berlin [this is highly misleading as ‘the pandemic™’ didn’t close schools—politicos™ did so at the express hectoring of certain experts™ (most of whom were decorated instead of pilloried]

By Ada M. Hipp, Berliner Zeitung, 6 April 2025 [source; archived]

While politicians are trying to come to terms with the Corona period, we teachers are trying to do what we can hardly manage: to close the educational gaps that have arisen and lead our students to successful graduation.

It’s a Thursday in March, a special day. It’s exam day. The school building is quiet all day long. Only a whisper here and there can be heard.

Both seventh and eighth grades are on a field trip today while the ninth grade is participating in a mock BBR [short for Berufsbildungsreife, i.e., the final exam after grade 9]. The tenth graders will take their first exam today. It’s one of four exams as part of the intermediate [or secondary] school-leaving certificate examinations. It is called PibF, a special form of examination, commonly known as a presentation examination [the acronym means Prüfung in besonderer Form, i.e., an exam under special circumstances]. Candidates can choose the topics for this type of exam themselves. They can prepare them independently at home, at school, or in the library with their co-examiners. The PibF is a group examination.

They are informed of the exam results immediately after the exam in a final interview. At our school, all candidates hope to achieve at least a grade three so that they can compensate for the grade five that the majority of them are likely to receive in the written maths exam for the MSA [Mittelschulabschluss, or middle school finals] and thus achieve the intermediate school-leaving certificate [Germany uses numerical grades, 1 = A, 2 = B, 3 = C, 4 = D, 5 = E, 6 = F].

No Cries of Joy—What Happened?

But even afterwards, after several exams have passed, the silence in the building does not change. It remains still and quiet, somehow even oppressive. Unusual. Normally, after exams we hear, at least occasionally, shouts of joy, laughter, and excited conversations in which good grades are shouted out loud to each other. Not on this day. What happened?

The longed-for 3s [Cs] were not awarded as often as the students had hoped, let alone 2s [Bs] or even 1s [As]. This year, grades of E were awarded more frequently, sometimes even F. The students concerned know that they are now under enormous pressure to pass the written exams in maths, German, and English with at least a passing grade. This year, 25% of our students will no longer be able to compensate for a failing grade, for example in the ‘anxiety subject’ of maths.

This year’s class is the lowest-performing class at our school since the introduction of the Berlin school structure reform in 2010, which transformed the former Hauptschulen and Realschulen into integrated secondary schools [so, the left-wing gov’t created a one-size-fits-all secondary school system: note the results™].

80% of current tenth-graders failed the 2024 vocational qualification exams in mathematics and German. This means, in plain language, that these 80% currently have no prospect of leaving school with the Mittlere Reife (intermediate school leaving certificate). Unless, of course, they include those who have just passed the PibF with at least a grade of three.

A First in the Spotlight

Some students already know that they will likely leave school without a qualification. Their only chance would be to successfully retake the BBR exam. By the midterm, they had such poor grades that they could not be admitted to the MSA exams. This is also a first for us at a so-called hotspot school [Brennpunktschule, i.e., the German equivalent of, in US lingo, a failed inner city school].

Not that our students didn’t receive any support from us. Quite the opposite: aware of the often precarious learning and working conditions in their home environments, the often lacking support from their parents, and their lack of necessary skills, we provided them with as much help as was reasonably possible. Above all, we gave them time.

Time plays a crucial role. Especially in the week immediately before the exams, subject teachers gave up their teaching hours for exam preparation and refrained from forcing students through their coursework.

Most of the substitute lessons were spent in the computer labs. This allowed the candidates to work in their teams, something they would otherwise have been unable to do due to a lack of private space. They also had the opportunity to gather together in the school in the afternoon and use the school’s computers to research and create a PowerPoint presentation [the main issues here relate to both low income families, class discrepancies, the growing gap between the lower rungs of society and their betters, and, of course, widening differentials in terms of life prospects].

In addition, at the beginning of the school year, our school offers a one-week workshop on presentation exams, where the necessary strategies for a successful exam are practiced step by step.

They are Simply at a Loss for Words.

Virtually all of our students have a migration background. Some are third- or fourth-generation immigrants living in Germany. Although their parents attended school here, due to language barriers, they often either have very low educational qualifications or left the German education system without a qualification. Others, however, have parents who only attended school for a few years in their home countries, some even never [talk about ‘systemic racism’ in Europe for a change: it would be more apt to consider this notion here than in the US where, while there are tons of issues, hard work also permits upward social mobility—by contrast, ‘Europe’ is way more classist].

Often, the only intellectual input for the children comes from the school, sometimes even from TikTok or Instagram. Students have occasionally received book recommendations here.

The greatest difficulty for our students is finding topics for the exam. Most of them come from so-called educationally disadvantaged families. Books are hard to find in the home, and reading is often not done. Shared conversations at the dinner table don’t take place. They simply lack the words that would enable them to develop and create an appealing presentation. The topic of school hardly plays a role in their home environment. This was also the case during the pandemic [so the Covid Mania exacerbated pre-existing problems; note, further, that this issue isn’t germane but to migrant communities—significant shares of Western societies are functionally illiterate as little to no reading or writing (or maths, for that matter) is done once more advantaged students graduate].

Parents Doubling as Teachers

This year’s tenth grade was in fifth grade when schools closed for the first time on 25 March 2020. They were taught remotely, as far as possible, as far as parents had telephone contact with the elementary school teacher, as far as parents could receive work assignments for their children via email, and as far as the elementary school teacher occasionally visited them personally and dropped worksheets in their mailboxes with instructions for the parents.

Because it was they who got their children to complete their homework and supported them; they were the ones who not only supervised their children, but were also teachers and parents. At least in homes with a strong educational background or those who understood the importance of school. This was different for many of our students.

As they told us at the time, they rarely or never completed their elementary school homework [here you have, in a nutshell, why such approaches fail: there’s no problem with eventually catching up later—but at that point, those with more advantages have often moved on; typically, this is reinforced across class lines]. Often, their parents lacked their own email address, and some families only had a cell phone, which didn’t always have credit [i.e., prepaid phones with limited internet connectivity].

In some families, up to six children shared one laptop. At home, they were on their own because their parents couldn’t help them [often, these adults were deemed ‘essential workers’ while their more affluent, middle-class laptop classists could almost enjoy ‘working from home’]. Older siblings were often their only academic support. Sometimes there was also contact with classmates.

Politicians’ Promises Rendered Absurd

After the summer holidays and Lockdown 1 [in 2020], there were supposed to be no more school closures. The pandemic seemed to have been banished by the summer heat. Consequently, it was decided that schools would reopen for everyone, meaning classes would continue as before the pandemic, all subjects would be held in full classrooms, but with social distancing, as far as possible in a full classroom, and hygiene measures using various disinfectants, face masks, and ventilation.

As more and more students and teachers became infected with COVID-19, schools were able to obtain permission to conduct hybrid instruction—half of the class was to be taught in school and the other half was to be taught online or through assignments and worksheets at home. SalzH became the new term: school-led learning at home [orig. Schulisch angeleitetes Lernen zu Hause, which, of course, didn’t change the above-related fundamentals].

On 16 December 2020, schools closed again. The November lockdown light was not enough to contain the pandemic. The political promise that there would be no further lockdown for schools was reduced to absurdity [no-one was pilloried for these decisions].

Once again, we had to arrange online class meetings with the students, including the new seventh-grade students. This time, we were better prepared; everyone had their own school-related email address. Contact with each other was possible via various specially created platforms [another wonderful aspect to enquire about would be the grift/contracting associated with this, but, alas, not a whole lot journalism is done about this].

Exams were Suspended in 2021

The 2021 MSA exams were suspended, just like the year before. In 2022 and 2023, the exams were administered with reduced requirements. These restrictions were no longer to apply in the final year of 2024. The MSA exams were administered at the pre-pandemic level. Missed lessons and missed material from 2020, 2021, and 2022 were... made up? Do the final grades reflect this? Should everything be fine now?

The 2023 vocational qualification exams already cast doubt on this. 63% of our students failed to achieve the vocational qualification. This was our first ‘coronavirus cohort’ in grade 7. 30% achieved the 2024 intermediate school leaving certificate [i.e., things got worse from 2023].

The pandemic and the associated school closures are partly to blame for our failure to make up for the deficits that had arisen [sure, let’s not forget politicos™, experts™, and journos™ pushing this shit]. It ultimately brought to light what had been simmering underground for years. Because inadequate early childhood education, inadequate or nonexistent support at primary school age, little to no support from parents (who often have little education), massive deficits in German language skills, reading comprehension, and logical reasoning, among other things, all coupled (also) with low motivation and willingness to learn, existed even [sic] before the pandemic. With the Startchancen program, we may be able to (finally) provide children with educational equity [Bildungsgerechtigkeit]

---

Bottom Lines

More quite piss-poor reporting™—carefully, politicos™ and experts™ are omitted (we only read about ‘the pandemic™’) while the author’s assessment may be quite accurate in terms of the underlying conditions:

inadequate early childhood education, inadequate or nonexistent support at primary school age, little to no support from parents (who often have little education), massive deficits in German language skills, reading comprehension, and logical reasoning, among other things, all coupled (also) with low motivation and willingness to learn, existed even [sic] before the pandemic

Yet the solutions™ proposed are insane:

With the Startchancen program, we may be able to (finally) provide children with educational equity

More centralisation, federal funds, and attention is pushed as the one and only solution to this conundrum.

After Western gov’ts have imported, via mass migration, ‘the most educated labour force of all times’, as it’s typically (mis)labelled. In reality, the situation was bad to being with—and it became worse in the past decade.

If you read German, here’s the official website of the Startchancen program, which ‘seeks to decouple education from social descent’.

Here’s the main aim:

A particular focus of the support is on strengthening basic skills such as reading, writing, and arithmetic. The goal is to halve the number of students who fail to meet the minimum standards in mathematics and German at the Startchancen schools by the end of the program. The support also focuses on the personal development of the students. The Startchancen program is designed to help young people acquire the necessary skills for the future, such as the ability to participate democratically.

The bar is low enough for politicos™ to declare victory™ in ten years. And continue with the largesse nonetheless, which I consider the most likely outcome despite any successes or failures.