Ladies and gentlemen of the council,

It is with great pleasure that I have the opportunity to share the report on Germany’s
progress towards the UN Global education initiatives. Over the last 40 years it has been a long
and argues journey to revamp the German education system. Though the last 15 were not as hard
as the first, they have been just as exciting and have gained even more momentum. Allow me to
outline some of our progresses and our obstacles still to negotiated.

The German people have come to know that public education is a vital element that contributes
to a well-educated citizenry and a sense of common purpose. Our compulsory school attendance
law has secured the first initiative of having every child in school. Even with all the
advancements we have made to our education system there are still barriers we have yet to
overcome. Officially we are formally against elitism and favoring any social class. Though our
educational system is basically a three-class system that divides students into three different
tracks.

Our efforts over the past several decades to reform this system, with its emphasis on
tracking, have largely been unsuccessful. The same tracking system also exists in neighboring
Austria and Switzerland. We have come to believe that citizens of countries that share German
heritage seem to feel that the current system produces good results. Though, in some states there
has been attempt to reform the system by creating a more inclusive kind of secondary school,
more like the American high school. The Gesamtschule (comprehensive school) was introduced
as an alternative to the traditional three-tiered secondary education system. Instead of three
different schools, there are three different tracks within one school. Unfortunately, some teacher
unions and parent groups felt that the comprehensive school was inferior to the traditional
system. Still, I am confident that we will find a permanent solution to this aspect of improving
our quality of learning for all students. In the mean time we have achieved many other
educational reforms that have improved the students’ quality of learning. Like making the
classroom sizes smaller making it a better learning environment.

Lastly, between 2013 and 2015, the number of international students enrolled at German
institutions rose from 282,201 to 321,569. China was the largest source country, accounting for
12.8 percent of inbound students, followed by India and Russia with 4.9 percent each. U.S.
students only accounted for 1.7 percent of international enrollments in Germany. We seek to
further increase the country’s international student population to a total of 350,000 students by
2020 to further foster a global citizenship.

This is a bar graph ranking of the education systems of some nations in the European Union
Taken from www.indy100.com/article/international-students-europe-best-places-to-student-
germany-netherlands-2017-7633491.

This line graph illustrates the decrease we have made in classroom sizes to improve the students’
quality of learning. Taken from
data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.PRM.ENRL.TC.ZS?end=2015&locations=DE&start=2000&vi
ew=chart.
Resources
 “Pupil-Teacher Ratio in Primary Education (Headcount Basis).” Pupil-Teacher Ratio in
Primary Education (Headcount Basis) | Data,
data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.PRM.ENRL.TC.ZS?end=2015&locations=DE&start=2
000&view=chart.
 Jones, Wil. “These Are the Countries in Europe Where International Students Want to
Study the Most.” indy100, 16 Mar. 2017, www.indy100.com/article/international-
students-europe-best-places-to-student-germany-netherlands-2017-7633491.
 “Education in Germany.” WENR, 22 Sept. 2017, wenr.wes.org/2016/11/education-in-
germany.