The middle school leaving certificate (MSA) should be awarded this year due to the pandemic without the written exams. However, the oral presentation examination should be retained. The Tagesspiegel learned this from school leaders. The Senate Department for Education confirmed the information on Saturday upon request.
“The teachers can concentrate better on imparting knowledge in the classroom so that the students can get good educational qualifications during this special time,” said Education Senator Sandra Scheeres (SPD), explaining her decision to the Tagesspiegel.
A similar procedure was chosen in secondary schools and grammar schools as early as 2020 to make it easier for schoolchildren and teachers to cope with the pandemic in school.
School administrators reacted with relief to the news: Due to the school closure, they can only prepare their students for the exams to a limited extent. Again and again it was demanded that it was more important to go through the subject matter than to have to use the little remaining time for exam preparation. This consideration had already been decisive in the previous year.
In addition, the tenth graders have to work under very different conditions – depending on how well their schools support learning at home. These discrepancies are likely to become even greater if some of the schools voluntarily bring their graduating classes back to schools from Monday, but others do not. All three exams in mathematics, German and the foreign language should be omitted.
The abolition of the MSA exams in 2020 meant that the final grades of secondary school students were significantly better, which is why more students were entitled to transition to upper secondary school. This confirmed the long-standing fear that the pure grades are “too good”, i.e. do not correspond to the performance of the students: This tendency had emerged since the secondary school reform.
The MSA at high schools is already being disputed
The expert commission headed by Kiel educational researcher Olaf Köller (SPD) recently confirmed this deficiency and called for better teaching in German and mathematics, especially in grades 9 and 10.
In addition, the Commission considers the MSA exams to be superfluous in the grammar schools, because the grammar school students in the second half of the tenth grade are already occupied with the upper school material and lose unnecessary time by returning to the “old” material. Scheeres had agreed to the recommendation to omit the MSA exams at the grammar schools. The coalition does not want to follow her in this.
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For the Association of Senior Academic Directors (VOB), its chairman Ralf Treptow said on request: “As in 2020, the cancellation of the MSA exams is logical and in view of the expected discontinuity in face-to-face teaching, there is almost no alternative”. At the same time, it is urgently necessary to “finally change the MSA in Berlin according to needs”.
As reported, the VOB has been calling for a different MSA form for grammar schools for years: Since grammar school students graduate from high school in just twelve years, they have to complete the MSA material at the end of the ninth or the beginning of the tenth grade. The tenth grade has a double function in the grammar schools.
According to reports, the regulation also applies to the exams for vocational training. They also fell away – like in 2020.
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