This Friday, relief will come for some, for others there will be a rude awakening: around one million schoolchildren in Bavaria will receive their interim reports, which should serve as a guide to their performance in the past half-year. After two years of a pandemic with phases of alternating classes and homeschooling, gaps in knowledge have emerged that can have serious consequences, especially for students from transition classes, as counseling teacher Laetitia Löchner and headmaster Markus Martini from the Ismaninger Gymnasium know.
SZ: Will the missed material be reflected in the grades of the interim reports?
Markus Martini: That’s not an easy question to answer. The gap in education, which has always been lamented, has definitely widened further. You can see that in the individual performance assessments: while there are good students who have benefited from being able to learn at their own pace, a number of weak students now have even bigger gaps. The cuts are the same as before, but the distribution is different. While the midfield used to be well represented, there are now more very good grades, but unfortunately also more bad ones at the moment.
Laetitia Lochner: We have some students who get five grades in their interim reports, but the average for them has gotten significantly worse. But I actually believe that one of the reasons for this is that under normal circumstances we were able to react more quickly and say: Wouldn’t it be better to step down voluntarily in this case?
Many students simply advanced to the next class during the corona pandemic.
Martini: This is a major dilemma for teachers: how strict should one be with students during or shortly after the distancing phase? On the one hand, you have to admit that it wasn’t easy for them and that they should therefore advance. But it might have been good for some people to say right away, I’ll do another round.
“Some would have done well to say right away, I’ll do another round now”: Headmaster Markus Martini.
(Photo: private)
As a counseling teacher, do you have to have more such problem talks about repeating a grade?
holes: I actually started with the Corona pandemic as a counseling teacher, so I don’t know how it was before. But I’ve had a lot of conversations like this at the moment. You also have to look at the psychological dimension. Of course it does something to a child when they are two years older than their classmates because they have repeated twice.
Has the pressure to perform in face-to-face classes increased compared to the homeschooling period?
holes: Many students have had great difficulty getting used to the pressure of grades again. You can see that the number of test anxiety cases has also increased. The students also want to know much more: What grades have I got now?
How do you try to contain this burden in the counseling session?
holes: First of all, it is important to take time for the students and to talk to them. Quite often it helps to have a separate contact person who is not the parents or the teachers. But it is very individual. A lot of it is because the students have a guilty conscience or because the material still to be learned feels like a huge mountain. You have to work step by step: learning methods, how do I structure my day, tips against exam anxiety. In addition, some students have to be told: There are also alternative options. High school is not the only route to high school. Of course, this also includes a lot of discussions with the parents.
“Expectations have not increased, on the contrary”: counseling teacher Laetitia Löchner.
(Photo: private)
What advice do you have for parents in such situations?
holes: take the pressure off. There is no shame in repeating. There is no shame in the child changing to a different type of school. On the contrary: A sense of achievement is extremely important for the pupils, and the most important thing is that the parents give them positive support, even when it comes to changing schools.
Do you think that the expectations of the teachers and the learning capacity of the students match?
holes: Of course, we are all aware that students have gaps. But it is also clear that we cannot only offer repeats and no new material. What do we do with the students who participated and learned great? Then they get bored. But it has to be said that for the students who have built up large gaps, it certainly seems as if the expectations are very high. I would say that expectations have not increased, quite the opposite.
Martini: The majority of the students also take advantage of the additional offer. The greatest is the “students helping students” project, which is funded by the state. Older students help younger students catch up on their exams. It’s going well and the older students are very motivated. The students also accepted the additional courses and the summer school willingly.
Will the exams be more merciful?
Martini: Yes, for high school this applies in particular to the Abitur exams. The last Abitur content was omitted, and that will also be the case in 2022. I don’t know yet whether it will be the same in 2023. But I think that at some point you have to say again that we’ve managed to catch up.
But the generation that will graduate from high school in a few years will have gaps in their knowledge, but will have to meet the normal requirements of high school.
Martini: You’re right. But they have enough time to catch up with additional offers. In addition, there are far fewer trips. There are therefore more lessons than under normal conditions.