The proportion of pupils who repeat a class has risen again in all federal states except Bremen.
"Following changes to transfer regulations in the first school year after the outbreak of the corona pandemic, significantly more children and young people repeated a grade in the 2021/2022 school year," the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden announced on Monday.
Nationwide, a total of around 155,800 students either repeated voluntarily or were not transferred.
That was 67 percent more than in the 2020/2021 school year and 8 percent more than in the 2019/2020 school year.
According to the information, the rate of those who remained seated nationwide rose from 1.4 percent in the 2020/2021 school year to 2.4 percent in the past school year.
For comparison: In the 2019/2020 school year, when the corona-related transfer rules had not yet come into effect, the rate was 2.3 percent.
Bremen as an exception
In the course of the pandemic, special rules regarding transfers were introduced in many federal states due to the cancellation of classes or alternating and distance teaching.
"In many cases, the transfer was no longer linked to school performance," the statisticians explained.
In almost all federal states, the proportion of repeaters among the school population increased compared to the 2020/2021 school year.
The only exception was Bremen, where the rate fell from 1.7 percent to 1.5 percent.
The proportion was highest in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, at 5 percent, where 5,800 children and young people repeated the grade or level.
The rate was lowest in Berlin at 1.2 percent.
The transfer is regulated differently in the individual federal states, it said.
More than half of the children and young people (58 percent) who repeated the grade in Germany in the 2021/2022 school year were male.
Accordingly, the rate also varies according to gender: Most recently, 2.8 percent of the students had to repeat a class or level, for the female students the proportion was 2.1 percent.