Many students know this all too well: not only are their cognitive performance in mathematics, German and biology evaluated, but also their work and social behavior.

These behavioral grades are at the top of the certificates;

therefore they are also called "top notes".

Lisa Becker

Editor in business

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There are some hopes associated with the top notes: They could lead children and young people to become friendlier, more agreeable, more social, and more hard-working people. It could also boost their academic performance and improve their chances of entering the job market. Especially since we know that employers attach great importance to so-called soft skills and complain in surveys that applicants do not have enough of them.  

Top notes are controversial, as the Munich Ifo Institute for Economic Research writes, which is currently investigating the effect of behavioral notes and published the results on Monday.

Opponents claim that behavioral grades are strongly dependent on the respective context and are therefore hardly comparable.

Students could therefore consider them unjust, which demotivates them and worsens both their learning and social behavior.

Additionally, these ratings boosted extrinsic motivation at the expense of much more sustained intrinsic.

"Debate is ado about nothing"

Because the views on the top notes are so contradicting, they were abolished and reintroduced in some federal states in the 2000s. The Ifo Institute used these temporal differences between the federal states to investigate the consequences of this form of grading. The scientists evaluated extensive data sets from performance tests and household surveys and came to a sobering result: behavior grades are "meaningless for educational success and entry into professional life".

They did not influence school performance, character traits or employment.

Apparently they did not have a positive or negative effect on the development of the students.

“The heated debates about it were therefore a lot of ado about nothing,” the researchers state.

One explanation could be that the additional information content of the top grades is rated as low, because subject grades already partly include the behavior and cooperation of the students.

The Ifo Institute sees the results of the study as further evidence that some educational reforms are hotly debated in public, but are meaningless for the students.

It is better to concentrate on reforms that have been shown to improve the quality of education.