According to an ifo survey, a majority of Germans believe that digitalization could exacerbate inequalities in the education system. Overall, awareness of the problem of educational injustice has increased.
53 percent of Germans fear that digitalization could lead to greater inequality in the education system. This is shown by the representative results of the current education barometer from the ifo Institute. 62 percent consider unequal opportunities between children with and without a migration background to be a major problem. Almost as many respondents find unevenly distributed opportunities between children from good and difficult social backgrounds problematic. Only 14 percent see no problems.
Researcher: Concerns about inequality have increased
“Concerns about the fact that children of different social backgrounds do not have the same opportunities in the education system have increased in recent years,” says Ludger Wößmann, head of the ifo Center for the Economics of Education. “The Germans want something to be done about it.”
The education barometer is carried out annually. According to the Ifo Institute, 5,636 people were surveyed for the current edition. The focus this year is the topic of educational inequality and what solutions German citizens want for it.
In order to combat educational inequality, 69 percent of those surveyed are in favor of targeted financial support for schools with many disadvantaged children, in the form of a so-called opportunity budget. Only 20 percent of those surveyed are against this. 69 percent also support limiting the proportion of students with foreign citizenship and inadequate language skills to 30 percent per class. 20 percent are against this measure.
Germans for Salary supplements for teachers at problem schools
65 percent of Germans are in favor of introducing an index that shows whether schools face particular problems due to the social environment of the student body; 18 percent are against it. And 55 percent support salary supplements for teachers at schools with many students from disadvantaged backgrounds; 31 percent are against it.
The recently published Ifo Opportunity Monitor shows that the chances of educational success in Germany are very unequally distributed and depend heavily on the social status of the parents. Inequalities arise even with the same school performance. The probability of receiving a recommendation for transfer to high school is around 2.5 times higher for children from better-off families than for children from working-class families, given the same grades.