One point more in MV
Teachers’ association reprimands Abi revaluation
7/4/2023 1:06 am
The math exams in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania are so devastating that the Ministry of Education decides to collectively upgrade the results. What students are happy about causes disagreement elsewhere.
The German Teachers’ Association and business representatives criticize the fact that Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania values the written mathematics Abitur because of the many poor results. This distorts the nationwide comparability of grades, said the new president of the teachers’ association, Stefan Düll, of the “Bild” newspaper. There are always deviations in the note cuts. “One must not fall into the trap of wanting to excuse everything with Corona in the future.” Düll has headed the Justus von Liebig High School in Neusäß near Augsburg since 2014.
The general manager of the Central Association of the German Construction Industry (ZDB), Felix Pakleppa, accused politicians of playing the wrong game. “You can miscalculate at school, but not on the construction site. The wall has to be straight,” he told the newspaper. The companies in his industry have to “retrain apprentices in math and German more and more often,” explained Pakleppa. “A tiler, for example, has to be able to calculate the floor. That has to be right in any case and mustn’t be wrong.”
The President of the Federal Association of Freight Transport and Logistics (BGL), Dirk Engelhardt, also criticized the subsequent adjustment of grades. State Minister of Education Simone Oldenburg justified the grade upgrade with the fact that the processing time of the tasks had been assessed by experts in retrospect as too short. In addition, the 10th graders of this high school class were in distance classes from December to May due to the corona restrictions, according to the left-wing politician. According to the experts, this has a negative effect, especially in mathematics.
Failed on average
All those who have written a maths test, both basic course and advanced course students, receive the additional grade point. According to the Ministry, there is a choice between a written and an oral Abitur exam in the basic course.
In the math basic course, the average of the written Abis was 4.0 or 4.2 points and thus significantly below the level of the previous year. Five points are required to pass the exam. In 2021, the math Abi in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania was even raised by two grade points due to poor results.