Enrollment rush to Munich high schools. More and more parents in the Bavarian capital see their children at a grammar school. In 2021, there will again be more registrations than places available at individual schools.
Munich – In Bavaria, the annual transfer of transfer certificates for fourth graders is followed by registration of children in secondary schools in May. More and more of them want to go to high school or do their Abitur.
The official figures from the City of Munich from the Department for Education and Sport confirm the trend that has been going on for years: never before have so many Munich primary school students switched to grammar school as this one, namely around 55 percent of a year and thus 2 percent more than in the previous year as a whole 5,459 children.
As the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports, the Unterföhring grammar school with 267 registrations would have had to form nine entrance classes for the coming school year in order to be able to accommodate all children. But only five entrance classes were possible. The headmistress had to reject around 100 parents. Some of them were upset about it.
The child in high school is a status symbol
There are a total of 41 grammar schools in Munich. Some of them will have to form an additional fifth grade for the coming school year. Including the Louise-Schröder Gymnasium in Untermenzing, for which registrations have risen by 40 percent compared to the previous year. The school is now accepting more students than originally planned, which initially satisfies the parents, but is increasingly pushing their spatial capacities and the resources of the teaching staff * to their limits.
Enrollments at the grammar schools are unevenly distributed, and there are certainly schools that still have places available. But these are often those whose reputation cannot compete with the elite reputation of the humanistic Wilhelmsgymnasium near the fine Maximilianstrasse.
It is the oldest grammar school in the city, where many well-known personalities such as management consultant Roland Berger, the writer Golo Mann, the painter Carl Spitzweg, ex-minister of culture Julian Nida-Rümelin and composer Konstantin Wecker graduated from high school. The Wilhelmsgymnasium currently has around 550 students.
Munich: Parents can decide for themselves which school their child should go to
In principle, parents do not have to take care of the placement of their children at a grammar school themselves; this is done by two so-called ministerial representatives of the city. Officials of the Bavarian Ministry of Education, who are authorized to give instructions to the grammar schools.
But of course the parents have the right to take action themselves and to intervene if they do not agree with a school assigned to their offspring. And that’s what they do. Some parents also go to court if their child is not given a place at the school they want.
According to the city’s education report, the main reason for the continuous increase in grammar school enrollments in Munich since 2014 is the strong influx and the above-average birth rate * of the past decade. But social science also sees a dogged ambition on the part of parents to take their child to high school for the devil as a driver of the increasing number of registrations. * Merkur.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA
