Status: 01/30/2023 12:27 p.m
The number of students who have to repeat a grade has increased by 67 percent in the past school year. In 2020/21 repeaters were much rarer in the school system due to the corona pandemic.
The proportion of pupils who repeat a class has risen again in almost all federal states. “Following changes to transfer regulations in the first school year after the outbreak of the corona pandemic, significantly more children and young people repeated a grade in the 2021/2022 school year,” said the Federal Statistical Office.
Nationwide, a total of around 155,800 students either repeated voluntarily or were not transferred. That was 67 percent more than in the 2020/2021 school year and eight percent more than in the 2019/2020 school year.
School performance played less of a role in the pandemic
During the corona pandemic, a particularly small number of students remained nationwide at 1.4 percent. Now the proportion has risen again to 2.4 percent and is thus at the pre-corona level. In 2019/20, 2.3 percent of the school population had to repeat a school year.
In the course of the pandemic, classes in schools were often canceled. Alternating and distance learning led to the introduction of special rules regarding the promotion of students. “So the transfer was often no longer linked to school performance,” said the Federal Statistical Office.
Some differences between the federal states
The current repeat rate differs significantly between the federal states. The proportion of repeaters was highest in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (five percent), lowest in Berlin (1.2 percent). The differences are also due to the different educational policies of the federal states. They mean that transfers are sometimes regulated differently.
In almost all federal states, however, the proportion of repeaters increased compared to the 2020/2021 school year. The only exception was Bremen, where the quota fell slightly.
More than half of the children and young people who repeated a grade in 2021/2022 were male (58 percent). 42 percent were therefore female.