Timelines

The study was first conducted in 2000 and has been repeated every three years since then. The aim is not only to test students' basic skills, but also to find out which factors determine the achievement of these skills. The 2003 PISA study highlights in its findings on the below-average performance of students that academic success and failure are fundamentally linked to factors such as social background, multilingualism, and the migration history of children and young people. As a result, students and their families were initially blamed for the poor performance and relatively poor statistics in the PISA study. Critics, on the other hand, point to deficits in the German school system, which they say fails to provide timely support to students with poorer access conditions and ignores structural problems and the responsibility of schools and education policy. The results of the PISA study have sparked a debate about institutional discrimination in German schools, with criticism focusing primarily on the physical separation of children with and without a migration background. However, segregation in school classes is not a phenomenon that was only triggered by the PISA study. Systematic segregation in schools already existed in the early 1970s: Although there was no separation based on nationality at that time, the proportion of “non-German” children in a class was not to exceed 25%. As a result, so-called “foreigners' classes” were created (see Family reunification and second generation in the FRG, 1976; “Welcome classes,” 2011). In Berlin, it was mainly students with a Turkish migration background who were affected by placement in “foreigners' classes,” as they formed the largest group of migrants. However, pressure from migrant institutions regarding this regulation grew, so that in 1995 the Berlin School Act was amended and both the quota system and the “foreigners' classes” were abolished.