In the Corona years, students did not have it easy. In many federal states, school closures are causing shifts in the curriculum and schedule. However, this did not harm the grade point average of high school graduates nationwide.
According to a newspaper report, during the corona pandemic there was an increase in top grades in the Abitur throughout Germany. In 2022, at least every fourth high school graduate in every federal state achieved an average grade between 1.0 and 1.9 in the final certificate, reported the "Stuttgarter Zeitung" and "Stuttgarter Nachrichten", citing the grade statistics of the Conference of Ministers of Education (KMK) about the past examination year. In eight federal states, at least a third of the high school graduates cut off at this level.
According to the report, the KMK statistics registered most high school graduates with a grade of one before the decimal point with values of more than forty percent in Thuringia and Saxony. In Brandenburg, Hesse, Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, 35 percent or more candidates achieved such final results.
The newspapers also write that compared to 2019, the last regular examination year before the start of the pandemic, there was double-digit growth in the proportion of top grades in the Abitur in some regions of Germany. In Baden-Württemberg there was an increase of eleven and in Berlin of ten percentage points.
After graduation, many high school graduates now continue with an apprenticeship, as a study by the Bertelsmann Foundation shows. According to the study, the proportion of those who started dual or school-based training after graduating from high school rose from 35 percent to 47.4 percent within ten years by 2021.
