PIRLS 2006 Encyclopedia

Sabine HornbergWilfried BosEva-Maria LankesRenate ValtinUniversity of DortmundGermanyLanguage and LiteracyIn Germany, the official national language and language of instruction in most schoolsis German. However, various minority groups, composed of recent immigrants, speakItalian, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, Polish, and other languages.Among the minority languages commonly spoken, Turkish dominates. These languagesare taught in some privately run schools, bilingual schools, or individual classes.Emphasis on LiteracyGermany has a rich literary history. There is a great variety of nationwide dailynewspapers, as well as regional or local newspapers in most towns. The circulation ofdaily newspapers is 291 per 1,000 inhabitants. 1 Of the public libraries, some are run bythe individual federal states (university libraries) and others by municipalities (municipaland local libraries). In 2005, almost 8.6 million borrowers were registered at over 10,000public libraries. 2 Several reading initiatives are run nationwide by organizations such asthe German Society for Reading and Writing and by public libraries.Overview of the Education SystemGermany is a federal republic formed by 16 federal states (Länder), which have solelegislative and administrative power over educational policy within their geographicalarea. This includes regulation of curricula and time schedules, professional requirements,teacher recruitment, and quality development in schools, as well as international mobilityand recognition of degrees. The states organize supervision of the school system in twoor three tiers: the Ministry of Education, its school boards at the regional level, andsometimes its school administrators at the local level. They coordinate their educationalpolicies through the Standing Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairsof the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany. Resolutions and recommendationsof the Standing Conference become legally binding only when these are adopted as statelaws, decrees, or regulations of state authorities. The Standing Conference also dealswith new developments requiring coordination between the states, such as recognitionof examinations or education of immigrant students.143