Central Abitur: advantages and disadvantages

Central Abitur – what is it?

Many German federal states are in favor of a central Abitur. The responsible ministry of culture provides the examination tasks for the Abitur and a binding catalog with correction specifications for the federal state in question. The Abitur tasks are therefore no longer developed by each school itself, but are set centrally by the state government. However, the exact process of checking and correction still varies from state to state.

This is how the Central Abitur works

As a rule, selected teachers from different schools first submit proposals for examination tasks. A commission from the Ministry of Education examines these suggestions and makes corrections if necessary. A uniform exam is then created from the various proposals. At a fixed examination date, all students who are being examined in the relevant subject in the federal state receive their tasks and have to solve them within the specified time. After that, the Abitur exams are corrected in up to three correction runs by different people. The first corrector is usually the subject teacher who prepared the students. After that, the exams either go to a second corrector within the school or are passed on to another school.

Advantages of a central high school diploma

The Central Abitur is highly controversial. Proponents praise the introduction because it has a number of benefits for everyone involved:

• More justice, because teachers can no longer give away exam questions
• Equal opportunities through equal tasks
• Improved comparability of results
• Relief for the teachers who no longer design the tasks themselves
• Assessment becomes more objective and does not depend on a teacher
• Precise specifications make the preparation easier

Disadvantages of a central high school diploma

Pupils who take a central Abitur get better grades on average than pupils who still have a decentralized Abitur. It is unclear whether this is due to the fact that the requirements have become lower or that the lessons are better tailored to the requirements for the central Abitur. Critics see the following disadvantages that result from the central Abitur:

• Less justice, because the students are taught differently, but have to solve the same tasks
• Strict guidelines limit the teachers in the classroom too much
• No more time for individual interests of teachers and students
• Material becomes more general, regional peculiarities disappear
• Despite the central Abitur, there is still a lot of room for maneuver when it comes to correction
• High personnel costs for the development of the tasks and the administrative effort

Which states have the Central Abitur?

The central Abitur has meanwhile become the standard case in Germany . Only Rhineland-Palatinate is still sticking to the decentralized Abitur, in which the individual course teachers have to prepare the tasks for the exam. The central Abitur has a long tradition in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, Saarland, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania also have the central Abitur. All other federal states gradually introduced the central Abitur from 2005 due to the poor PISA results. By the way: There is also a central Abitur in other European countries, for example in Finland, France, Poland, Russia and Lithuania.