“The education system is badly damaged.” This is what the director of the IPN - Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education, Olaf Köller, recently said when he presented the “MINT Young Talent Barometer 2021”.

The performance of many students fell significantly in the pandemic.

After the pandemic, according to Köller, a third of the students will be clearly behind.

Lisa Becker

Editor in business

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    They have to be reliably identified, and politicians are not allowed to distribute subsidies with a watering can.

    Special attention should also be paid to the first graders, to the students transitioning to the next school level and to German and mathematics.

    On behalf of the German Academy of Science and Engineering and the Körber Foundation, Köller regularly takes a look at how things are going with the young people in the fields of mathematics, computer science, natural sciences and technology (Mint), which are becoming increasingly important for business and society.

    There was reason to worry even before Corona - after a year of school closings, distance learning and alternating lessons, they have grown again.

    Shortage in engineering professions

    Köller's list of problems is long: The computer science class is ailing, the Mint training has slipped into a crisis, too many Mint students are dropping out of their studies.

    And: The knowledge in mathematics and natural sciences still left a lot to be desired.

    According to the Timss comparative study, the performance of German fourth graders in mathematics has declined since 2011, and the group of particularly poor performers has grown to a good 25 percent by 2019.

    Small, however, is the top group with 6 percent.

    In the 2018 Pisa study, a good fifth of ninth graders showed poor performance in mathematics.

    No Mint training is possible for them, explains Köller.

    Germany affords a good 20 percent of young people who are extremely weak in mathematics at the transition to the training market.

    The Association of German Engineers (VDI) and the employer-oriented Institute of German Business (IW) fear that the shortage of skilled workers will worsen, especially in the engineering and IT professions, which are becoming increasingly important for the economy.

    School education, especially in math and science subjects, is therefore of great importance, according to the “Ingenieurmonitor” from VDI and IW.

    No learning progress

    The pandemic has worsened the situation again. Even if there are no studies for Germany on the exact effects of school closings and distance learning, clear deficits are likely, as the IW explains in an analysis. Studies from Belgium and the Netherlands indicated that distance teaching did not produce any significant learning gain. In Germany, the situation could be even worse, according to the IW.

    Ingo Rauhut, who is responsible for occupations and the labor market at the VDI, says mathematics is a basic skill for taking up a degree in the Mint area.

    An engineering degree consists of at least 50 percent mathematics, often even 70 to 80 percent.

    “Only those who have had positive experience with mathematics in school can start an engineering degree.” Because more students from less educated backgrounds are now falling behind in mathematics, fewer young people may take up engineering studies - after all, it is always an advanced degree for young people Been non-academic households.

    Concerned students

    Students themselves also express concern about math classes in the pandemic. Even in normal times, the subject is fearful for quite a few - and tutoring topic number one. In addition, many parents, whose importance for the learning of their children has increased again during the pandemic, cannot help, especially in mathematics, especially if the offspring is in a higher class.