It is an annual comparison of the education systems of the German federal states. This year Bavaria scored 57.8 out of 100 points and took second place. Only Saxony is ahead, with 62.9 points; it traditionally tops this table.
At the same time, the study showed that since 2013 the German education system as a whole has deteriorated in a number of key areas. To understand what lies behind second place in this table, it is not enough to look only at pupils’ average scores. It is also important to see how individual indicators of education have changed, and why a state can remain among the leaders while the overall trend across the country is negative.
What exactly the ranking measures
The “Bildungsmonitor” covers 98 indicators grouped into 13 areas: from preschool education and secondary school to vocational training, higher education, science and digitalisation. The authors view the education system through the eyes of economists. They are interested in how far each state reduces educational poverty, helps supply the economy with skilled workers and supports its growth. The ranking therefore does not replace an official assessment of schools, and does not answer the question of where it is better to study and where one should not send one’s child.
The results of this year were presented on 14 September in Berlin. At the very bottom of the table were Brandenburg, North Rhine-Westphalia and Saxony-Anhalt, with Bremen in last place.
Bavaria’s lead over its nearest neighbours in the table is visible even to the naked eye. For example: third place went to Hamburg with 53.6 points, fourth to Baden-Württemberg with 52.3 points. Bavaria trails the leader by 5.1 points, whereas a year earlier, in the 2024 ranking, the gap was 6.2 points: Saxony then scored 64.1 points and Bavaria 57.9.
Bavaria remains among the leaders
In the area of “vocational education”, Bavaria took first place among all the states. In three further areas the state came second, and in three it came third. Bavaria’s positions are particularly strong in the quality of school education and in the level of educational poverty.
The “Bildungsmonitor” continues to name the support infrastructure for pupils as Bavaria’s weak point, and it is right to do so (we have already published a comparative overview of the level of pupil support). In addition, the ranking separately analyses how each area of education has changed over time.
Across the country as a whole, key indicators of education are declining
For Germany as a whole, the trend in the level of education is negative in several areas, and according to the study the level of education has fallen in all states without exception.
Since 2013, the assessment of the level of education has fallen:
- in the quality of school education – by 48.5 points;
- in educational poverty – by 41.8 points;
- in integration and equality of educational opportunity – by 25.1 points.
There are also areas where progress is visible:
- internationalisation of education;
- support infrastructure for pupils;
- conditions for childcare and supervision.
The authors link the fall in the quality of school education to two circumstances. First, the requirements placed on schoolchildren in mathematics, natural sciences and reading have declined. Second, the share of pupils who fail to reach minimum educational standards or leave school without a certificate has grown.
So perhaps it is time for education ministers to come down to earth and see the reality? For example, the modern German school is geared to ensure that the children of immigrants, even those with a high IQ, become merely “working hands”, because admission to the Realschule and the Gymnasium is possible only on the basis of grade average, and the entrance examination is so difficult that even those who qualify by grade average cannot pass it successfully. Moreover, a child who has arrived from another country does not know German at the level of children born here. As a result, the grade average in the first years will be low, which prevents the child from moving successfully into the school that suits his or her level of intellect. The child remains in an ordinary secondary school, where the level of education and of the surrounding society forces the child down to the level of that school.
Now a logical question arises: whom does our education system prepare from among immigrants? Servants and service staff? And what of equality of opportunity and the diversity that those same education ministers so pompously proclaim all the time?
Another problem affects the whole country: almost a fifth of young people, 18.8 per cent, have no vocational qualification after finishing their education. The head of the study, Axel Plünnecke, noted that education in Germany still helps people climb the social ladder, but educational poverty has grown. INSM Director Thorsten Alsleben stated that the country needs reforms from early education to vocational retraining. These data describe the country as a whole and do not determine Bavaria’s place in the overall ranking. But here a new problem arises. The proposal is addressed to the Federation as a whole, but Bavaria, as always, will go its own way, usually an illogical and populist one, and it is the children who suffer.
School in Bavaria: a high place in the ranking despite declining real results
In the area of “Quality of school education”, Bavaria still belongs to the group of leaders, primarily thanks to the indicators of pupils’ knowledge levels.
But the results of Bavarian schoolchildren did not improve in every one of the periods studied. A state can remain among the best and still lose ground in absolute real terms, if the other regions lose ground on the same indicators faster than Bavaria does.
The score in the “Integration” area has fallen markedly
The most noticeable change occurred in the “Integration” area, and, as is well known, this is no accident. In 2026 Bavaria scored 28.4 points here, against 63.2 points in 2013. The fall was 34.8 points: today this indicator is even less than half of its 2013 level. Yet at the same time we hear every day ten times as many loud statements from our Bavarian government, which are in essence populist remarks that have nothing to do with reality.
The concept of “Integration” in the “Bildungsmonitor” is broader than the share of schoolchildren with a migration background.
The “Integration” indicator includes three components:
- the share of foreign school leavers without a certificate;
- the share of foreign young people entitled to enter university;
- the link between pupils’ social background and their results in mathematics.
The 28.4 points attributed to Bavaria are therefore a composite score that combines different indicators into a single value.
Educational success and social background
Here the “Bildungsmonitor” touched on a question that also occupies a central place in the latest PISA results: how social background is connected with success in education. The PISA ranking measures the knowledge of 15-year-old schoolchildren in individual subjects. The “Bildungsmonitor”, by contrast, uses a broader approach and compares the education systems of the states across a multitude of indicators, from kindergartens to universities and scientific research.
Both studies agree on the main point. They trace how closely learning outcomes are connected with the socio-economic position of the family. For Germany as a whole, the “Bildungsmonitor” showed a strong dependence between background and academic success. The reason is set out above…
Second place is only part of the overall assessment
The results for Bavaria are mixed. In the overall ranking the state occupies second place with 57.8 out of 100 points and leads in several areas, including vocational education. But a high place in the ranking does not mean that all indicators have improved compared with 2013.
This is most vivid in the “Integration” area: 28.4 points in 2026 against 63.2 points in 2013. The “Bildungsmonitor” provides not only an overview of the current position in the ranking, but also data on how the education system has changed over recent years. It is precisely the combination of these two sets of figures that makes it possible to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the Bavarian school. And especially those areas where results have worsened over time.
For this reason, for the moment more questions remain than answers, and the main question is: why does our Bavarian government talk a great deal, yet, even seeing that education indicators have fallen sharply, do nothing to raise the level of education, especially in disadvantaged sections of society and among immigrants? Are Markus Söder and his appointees in the government really trying to shape the school so that the children of immigrants do not become a successful part of society but become servants? Personally, this is already beginning to remind me of the 1930s in Germany.
