Ready for school? An analysis of the developmental screening used as part of the school entrance examination in Germany

Abstract

The School Entrance Examination (SEE) provides important information about the educational needs of pre-school children and for health reporting. The SEE should reflect the latest scientific knowledge and generate high-quality data. To do this, it must meet scientific quality criteria and be continuously evaluated and further developed. Regarding the high relevance of the data and the enormous resources needed to test all pre-school children, the SEE must face a scientific and public debate with regard to its usefulness, content and structure. This requires a transparent communication and publication practice. The aim of this overview article was to summarize the publicly available information on the developmental screening incorporated in the SEE in the different federal states of Germany and to evaluate it in terms of transparency, completeness and scientific quality. While the assessed abilities were very similar, there were major differences in the timing of the SEE, whether a one- or multi-stage procedure was used and the extent to which all children were examined by physicians from the public health service. SOPESS is the most frequently used developmental screening method in Germany, for which sufficient quality criteria have been identified. For some of the other widely used methods, validation and standardization were found to be lacking. Overall, there is little publicly available information or scientific publications on the SEE. The heterogeneity of the procedures used in Germany can be seen as an opportunity for the further development and improvement of the SEE. Continuous communication between public health authorities and users as well as thorough scientific monitoring and public debate would be desirable in this context.