In Germany, there is a longstanding and ongoing public and academic debate about the merits of educational expansion (Kerstan  & Spiewak, 2017; Wolter, 2015; Nida-Rümelin, 2015). In the context of an education system that tracks students after four years of primary school, the share of students attending the highest academic track (the Gymnasium) rose considerably over the last 10-20 years. This has sparked discussions about the merits and reasons for this expansion. This study therefore pursues possible explanations for this trend, such as educational inflation and  provides reliable and representative data to this public and academic debate.

Our empirical approach relies on pooling five waves of PIRLS data (2001, 2006, 2011, 2016 & 2021), including variables from the national extension, such as the school transition after primary school. We then create a database which covers 20 years of primary school in Germany. Variables from the national extension allow us to distinguish (prospective) academic-track students (ATS) and students attending other tracks (OTS). In our view, this approach provides unique data, since other data sources do not (yet) span such a distance of time in Germany. 

Context
Germany’s education system is set-up to track students after grade four. This implies that students are sorted into different types of schools. The most challenging and prestigious track in Germany is the academic track (Gymnasium) which offers the direct path to university level education and exist in all German states. Whether students attend the Gymnasium or not is decided at the end of primary school and influenced by students, teachers, and parents (Kultusministerkonferenz, 2012).

Student achievement is most important at the end of primary school, which is assessed by the primary school teachers, based on grades but may include other factors. Primary school teachers then recommend a school track. Because track recommendation is closely associated with achievement, a naive explanation for the increasing shares of ATS would be to assume an increase in average achievement.We therefore ask:

RQ1: How has the share of ATS evolved along average achievement levels in German primary schools? How has the distribution of achievement evolved in the group of ATS and OTS?

Further, it is well known that the selection into track is also related to social status. First because, social status is related to more resources and facilitates achievement. Second, because parents can exert influence on the school recommendation and school transition of their offspring. It has been shown that primary school students with a higher social status receive more favorable recommendations (Dumont et al., 2014, 2019). Educational sociologists have used rational choice theories that model expected utility as the outcome of a cost-benefit analysis, in order to explain parental aspirations (e.g. Breen & Goldthorpe, 1997). An important motive for parents of higher-social status is to maintain their own status. However, due to the educational expansion since the 1970s, average aspiration has likely shifted since parents will hold, on average, more advanced degrees.

This could have resulted in an increased pressure or an informal understanding that students need to be able to attend the highest track even if their performance is insufficient. A direct path would be to lower the requirements for transitioning to the academic track; a less visible way could be the inflation of grades which has been observed in other parts of the education system (Grözinger & Baillet, 2015). We therefore ask:

RQ2: Has the achievement threshold for transferring to the academic track changed? 

RQ3: Has the association between achievement and marks changed and can this explain rising shares of ATS?

We are in the process of applying for German PIRLS data between 2001 and 2021 which includes a number of additional variables, most importantly the school transition after primary school and grades/marks. However, the latest wave (PIRLS 2021) will only be released by the Institute for Educational Quality Improvement (IQB) in early 2025. As a result, we only provide preliminary evidence that is based on a thesis using fewer variables and data between 2001 and 2016. We want to use data on the school transition, grades in three domains, basic demographics, plausible values and weights. In our preliminary approach we used pooled data and ran multilevel regression models using survey weights.

Our preliminary results only cover a subset of the research question that we would like to answer with the full data. Here, our regression models show a small but overall insignificant increase in average achievement levels from 2001 to 2016, which is unsuited to explain the significant increase in ATS students in the same period. That is, we estimate that the share of ATS rose from about 34% in 2001 to about 43% in 2016. Intriguing in this context, however, is the fact that the predicted threshold for transitioning to the Gymnasium, as compared to other tracks, experienced no significant change since 2001. That is, while primary students in Germany from 2001 to 2016 did not become significantly better at reading, many more transitioned to the academic track, while the average reading levels in the group of ATS students did not change significantly. In our view, this empirical pattern poses an interesting riddle. Further, it questions conventional wisdoms in the debate about educational “inflation”. According to our models, future ATS do not show lower levels of achievement (on average) in 2016 than in 2001.

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