(Quick review: after fourth grade, students head to one of three types of school - the Hauptschule with grades five through nine, after which an apprenticeship probably awaits; a Realschule with grades five through ten, leading probably to a technical college (Fachhochschule); or the Gymnasium, grades five through thirteen, perhaps leading to a university.)
A transformation has taken place in Germany over the last decade however; now the majority of students are finished after grade twelve. They take their Abitur - a massive battery of tests - a year earlier.
Why this change? In part, to standardize the German system to the other nations; in part, to get young people onto the job market quicker. Economists hope that this will resort in a larger number of wage earners relative to the number of retirees. Germany faces, as do all developed nations, a shortage of young people; the simple fact is that married couples are not having enough children.
Potential problems include a higher percentage of students who will need to repeat a grade - the total amount of material to be learned has not been reduced, and with more content being covered each year, it is more likely that a student will flunk. The Abitur, occurring a year earlier, still covers the same amount of material.
Another difficulty is that more students may choose to simply take a year off before going to the university. This would negate the hoped-for gain of having them on the job market a year earlier.
Some Germans wondered if this new system would necessitate a return to classes on Saturdays, which was a practice in some German areas during the mid-twentieth century; so far, however, this has not occurred.
Although the transition to twelve years of schooling was done in part to synchronize the German system with the rest of Europe, German schools had traditionally fewer hours of class per day than schools in other countries. Nudging the schools toward day-long instruction is a massive shift, changing physical needs in terms of buildings (most German schools had no cafeterias, because children went home for lunch), and changing societal and cultural patterns.
Of Germany's sixteen states (Bundesländer), only Rheinland-Pfalz has not completed the transition to twelves grades. The other territories had completed the transition by the 2012/2013 academic year (some earlier). Although the transition seems to be irrevocable, some critics are demanding a return to the thirteen-year system.
