Who makes it to high school? The opportunities for children from difficult backgrounds depend on which federal state they live in. This is what a study shows. Equal opportunities are therefore lowest in Bavaria and Saxony.
The educational opportunities for children from disadvantaged backgrounds differ significantly from state to state. This is the result of a study by the Munich Ifo Institute. These children have the best chances in Berlin and Brandenburg, the worst in Bavaria and Saxony.
The study compared the probability of attending high school for children from families in which neither parent has a high school diploma and who are not in the top quarter of household income with that for children from favorable backgrounds where there is at least one parent with a high school diploma or the family is in the top quarter household income lies.
Berlin and Brandenburg with the best values
Across Germany, 26.7 percent of children from disadvantaged backgrounds attend high school. 59.8 percent come from favorable social circumstances, more than twice as many. Children with a rather unfavorable family background have the best chances in Berlin and Brandenburg. According to the analysis, children from disadvantaged backgrounds are about half as likely to attend high school than children from favorable backgrounds. Equality of opportunity would be achieved at 100 percent. Nationwide, this figure is 44.6 percent – in Berlin it is 53.8 percent and in Brandenburg it is 52.8 percent.
“Interestingly, Berlin and Brandenburg are the only states in which children only switch to high school from the seventh grade onwards,” explained the head of the Ifo Center for the Economics of Education, Ludger Wößmann. In Saxony with 40.1 percent and Bavaria with 38.1 percent, however, the chances of going to high school for children from precarious backgrounds are the worst. Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein, Thuringia, North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse and Bremen are also below the national average when it comes to equal opportunities.
42 percent more net income with a high school diploma
“The differences are statistically, educationally and economically significant,” emphasized the Ifo Institute. On average, people with a high school diploma would earn 42 percent more net monthly than those without a high school diploma. “The great extent of inequality in educational opportunities is fortunately not irrefutable,” said study co-author Florian Schoner. “Political measures could specifically support children from disadvantaged backgrounds, ideally in early childhood.” Important starting points are targeted support for parents and schools in challenging situations, data-based language support and mentoring programs. Finally, a later division of schools could also change the unequal distribution of opportunities.
Data from the microcensus
The data comes from the 2018 and 2019 microcensus. For a sample of 102,005 children and young people between the ages of ten and 18, it provides information about high school attendance and family background. The number of cases ranges from just under a thousand children in Bremen to around 23,000 in North Rhine-Westphalia.