Secondary School

The German school system starts with 4 years of basic schooling, then it divides into three branches: Hauptschule (“Main School”), which then took 4 years and now takes 5, for non-academic students, where you learnt – and learn – English as the only foreign language. Realschule was for the average student, taking 6 years, where you learnt English and then also French. The top stream was and is the Gymnasium, taking 9 years, academically demanding. Latin was the main feature of the Gymnasium. At the time you could not gain entry to a German university without at least 3 years of Latin.

Children had to sit a three-day entrance exam to get into the Gymnasium. In my year, about 100 girls started, but after 2 years we were again divided into streams, and only the top stream learnt Latin. There were about 20 of us.

It is perhaps worth noting that in Germany the State System is the quality system. If you are bright enough to succeed in the State system, you do not go to a private school. As someone at Bonn University once said to me: “If you come here with a leaving certificate from a private school, we think: What’s wrong with you?” Teacher training is long (a five-year university course in two subjects, combined with three years of Philosophy and Educational Theory, followed by 2 years of training in schools), but after that you become a well-paid Public Servant for life. For some of my friends that was a major goal.