The education system in North Rhine-Westphalia constantly baffles me in my day-to-day work with my pupils. How do I write a summary? How about a commentary? We only had two lessons left before the next exam! We\u2019ve had so many cancelled lessons! I don\u2019t understand what my teacher wants! I hear this, or something similar, every day from pupils at a wide variety of grammar schools in Bonn who come to our school \u2013 mostly driven by intrinsic motivation \u2013 to acquire knowledge and skills outside school in order to get better marks. From my experience of now over 20 years working with pupils in Years 5 to 12, I see day in, day out just how superficially not only subject content but also methodological skills are dealt with in schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most of my pupils are left in the lurch, not knowing what is actually expected of them. On top of that, those pupils who have not yet worked out exactly how their teacher wants them to phrase things are at a disadvantage and end up with marks well below their potential. So when the president of the German Teachers\u2019 Association, referring to the latest PISA study from 2016, says that German pupils should once again be expected to perform better and that there should be less \u2018cuddly teaching\u2019, I am left speechless. My experience on the ground is quite different. Every day, I see anew that pupils are unsure about what they are supposed to be learning, how they should learn it, and what the purpose of it is. Every time there\u2019s a change of teacher, there\u2019s a disruption, because what Teacher XY wants is something Teacher Z absolutely does not want under any circumstances. In other words: the pupils who are best at guessing what their teacher wants \u2013 and, above all, how \u2013 and those who can quickly analyse, tactically and strategically, what makes their teacher tick, have the advantage. But surely that can\u2019t be right! This is not a criticism of teachers and should not be taken as such, but it would be an enormous help to many secondary school pupils if teachers allowed them to take an active part in their own learning, if pupils were given more tools to help them, for example, to write a proper text analysis. Pupils are constantly wondering what is expected of them and, above all, in what form. When I then hear from pupils that their marking schemes are taken away from them after exams \u2013 meaning they have no opportunity to look closely at what they could have written differently or better \u2013 I am more than astonished. What is the point of marking an exam? Surely it is to ensure that the mistakes I made \u2013 both in terms of content and language \u2013 are not repeated in the next exam. As things stand, however, we are a long way from achieving this, especially when the marking scheme is withheld from them. I now mark every exam and go through the mistakes with the pupils, including marking errors. And this is where huge gaps become apparent \u2013 not only in terms of content and methodology, but above all in terms of language. And that is certainly not something to be overlooked in English lessons. As a native speaker, I\u2019m truly amazed at what gets marked as wrong in the exams and what gets accepted as correct. When the next teacher comes along, the whole thing is turned on its head. What was right before is now wrong! And whatever a teacher doesn\u2019t know in English (because very few teachers in schools in North Rhine-Westphalia are native speakers), they don\u2019t want to know either! How are pupils supposed to make sense of it all? It\u2019s just as well that I\u2019ve now built up a large collection of exam papers and, together with my highly motivated pupils, can crack the \u2018teacher\u2019 system. My next post will be about intrinsic motivation and how I can foster it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n