The Second Inheritance
Why in Germany school passes on what it was meant to balance out
Money is passed on by the calendar, ability by the family home. School was meant to balance out the second inheritance. In Germany it deepens it, more than almost anywhere else.
I. The shock that never came
In December 2001 the results of the first PISA study were published, and Germany was in shock. For weeks the country argued about how to save its schools. On 8 September 2026 the results of PISA 2025 were published. German fifteen-year-olds scored 464 points in mathematics, 465 in reading and 486 in science. These are the worst results since the study began, worse than in the year of the first shock. In 2012 the scores had been 514, 508 and 524. Around a third of young people do not even reach basic proficiency in reading and mathematics, twice as many as in 2015. There was no outcry.
In October the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung explained this by saying that Germans had come to care rather little about education. Parents sought conversations with the school less often, children learned less. That may be so, but it is not peculiar to Germany. According to the OECD, the share of pupils who make a special effort on difficult tasks fell in 32 education systems, and Austria shows almost the same picture as Germany. What is German is something else: the steep fall, and the question of whom it hits.
II. Two children
Imagine two children in the same fourth-grade class. They read equally well, they think equally fast, their teacher considers both gifted. One child has parents in senior positions; the other has parents who work in a workshop and at a supermarket checkout. According to the primary school study IGLU, the second child, with the same reading and cognitive performance, has a roughly two and a half times lower chance of being recommended for the Gymnasium, the academic track.
What begins with that recommendation continues. According to the ifo Institute’s Opportunity Monitor, 28 per cent of children attend a Gymnasium if neither parent has the Abitur, but 75 per cent if both do. In PISA 2025 only about 2 per cent of disadvantaged fifteen-year-olds reach the top proficiency levels, compared with about 25 per cent of privileged ones. Between the two groups lie 125 points; the OECD average is 85.
A migration background, usually the first explanation offered in public debate, is according to the education economist Ludger Wößmann “less significant”. What is decisive is the parents’ education and income. The figure at the top end shows it too: the highest Gymnasium rates in the Opportunity Monitor are reached by children from families with the Abitur, high income and a migration background, at 80 per cent.
III. The second inheritance
In “The Calendar Bequeaths” and “A New Cross-Front” we described how wealth is passed on in Germany: increasingly as a gift at a favourable moment, and in such a way that on average 142,000 euros separate heirs from non-heirs. The same happens with ability, only more quietly.
School was once the counterpart to inheritance. What parents could not pass on, school was to give: reading, arithmetic, thinking, and with them the chance to build something oneself. In Germany it does this less and less. According to PISA 2025, social status explains 19 per cent of the differences in performance between pupils; the OECD average is 11.6 per cent. The link is stronger than at any time since the study began, about three times as strong as in Canada and twice as strong as in Denmark or Norway.
A child from a home with books, time and private tutoring thus inherits twice: the money and the ability. A child without this background inherits neither, and the school that was meant to make up for the second loss does so worse in Germany than in almost all comparable countries.
IV. The school that cannot balance out
A school can only balance things out with people, time and rooms. All three are lacking.
In the 2024/25 school year, 11.2 per cent of teachers had no teaching qualification; ten years earlier it was 4.3 per cent. 43.9 per cent work part-time, more than ever. Nobody knows exactly how many teachers are missing. Estimates range from a surplus to a gap of 55,000 this year alone, depending on whether all-day schooling and inclusion are counted. In North Rhine-Westphalia, 4.4 per cent of lessons were cancelled without replacement in the first half of 2025/26, and a further 9.5 per cent were covered by substitutes. In Baden-Württemberg, according to a survey of head teachers, 78 per cent of schools are staffed for at most nine tenths of their lessons. Of the special-needs education centres, only about one in fifty is fully staffed. The shortage thus hits hardest the children who need school most.
According to the KfW municipal panel, the investment backlog in school buildings amounts to 68.9 billion euros. Of the 6.5 billion euros of the first Digital Pact for schools, only 3.4 billion had been spent after five years. In the Start Opportunities Programme, meant to support 4,000 schools in difficult circumstances with 20 billion euros, the money for additional staff lies unused because the staff do not exist. Overall, Germany spends 4.4 per cent of its economic output on education; the OECD average is 4.7. The problem is not only too little money. It is money that does not arrive, because administrations cannot spend it on buildings and the people who would turn it into lessons are missing.
V. The certificate as heirloom
In the F.A.S., Wößmann said a sentence that explains more than any statistic. People may still care that the child goes to the Gymnasium, gets a good grade and passes the Abitur, “but whether there is really education behind it, that one has really learned something, not necessarily”.
The certificate replaces the ability. For families who give their children support anyway, the Abitur secures the inheritance, a paper that keeps access open. For children without that support, the ability itself would be their only capital. A school that hands out qualifications is of little use to them if it does not teach. In 2024/25, 8.4 per cent of an age group left school with no qualification at all, the highest share in more than twenty years. And 94 per cent of the firms surveyed by the chambers of industry and commerce in 2026 complain that their applicants are not ready for vocational training.
VI. It has been done before
That this is not fate is shown by Germany itself. After the shock of 2001 the Länder introduced educational standards and tested them, the federal government provided four billion euros for all-day schools, and language support was expanded. By 2012 the reading proficiency of fifteen-year-olds had risen from about 484 to 508 points, and the share of weak readers fell from 22.7 to 14.5 per cent. Germany did it, in ten years.
And it can still do it today, where there is the will. Hamburg is the only Land in the IQB education trend 2024 where ninth-graders’ performance did not fall significantly; in mathematics it rose from eleventh to fourth place. Hamburg allocates its teachers according to a social index: primary schools in difficult circumstances receive up to 50 per cent more posts. All four- and five-year-olds have their language skills assessed and are then supported. Even the CDU federal education minister Karin Prien called Hamburg’s education policy a model in May. Since 2021 Hesse has sent children with language deficits to compulsory preparatory courses before school entry, by now almost a third of an age group, and ranks first in the Education Monitor for the school success of foreign young people. Estonia, Europe’s best country in PISA 2025, shows that top performance and a weak link to social background can go together.
What works is therefore known: look early, support early, direct the means to where the need is greatest, and check whether it arrives.
VII. The thesis
Germany does not lack the knowledge of what works, nor primarily the money. It lacks the will to treat the collapse as an emergency. In 2001 the scores were better than today, and the country was shaken. In 2026 they are worse, and it carries on as usual. One difference is striking: for privileged children school still works. A quarter of them are high performers. The collapse is happening among the others.
A school that no longer balances out the family home has introduced the law of inheritance where it was never meant to apply. Whoever inherits gets the house and the ability. Whoever does not gets a certificate.
Further reading: A New Cross-Front · The Calendar Bequeaths · Youth Is Our Future · Are Democracy and Competence Incompatible?