Education and schooling in East Germany

Abstract

Since the summer of 1989, “peaceful revolutions” started to bring down the communist rule in the states of the Soviet sphere of influence. These revolutions led to a complete transformation of the political, ideological and economic systems. The German Democratic Republic (GDR) was re-structured into Laender which became constituent states of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). The socio-political change transformed the whole education system in East Germany. After the first changes between autumn 1989 and spring 1990 under the responsibility of the old regime, there was a broad consensus that a comprehensive reshaping of the educational system was necessary. The transformation process began after re-unification and national and state elections in October, November and December 1990. All elements of the GDR school system were sustainably reshaped. This included policy, law, organization, structure, curricula, and, partially, personnel. This being achieved by the mid-1990s, the educational transformation rapidly showed itself as only preliminary. The most important reason is the drastic decline in the birth rate that is causing serious problems to all parts of the newly established educational systems in East Germany. But as it shows, the current public discourse on outcome and competitiveness of the all-German school system in the aftermath of the PISA study is distracting from all other urgent problems in education and schooling in the new Laender.