Bavaria is expanding new business schools for fifth graders

Would be more space in the building of the Donauwörth business school! Then headmistress Gabriele Braun might open another fifth grade. Because the waiting list with children who prefer to switch to the practice -oriented business school right after fourth grade is a good bit larger than the number of places in Donauwörth.

26 fifth graders will learn from autumn at the private school in the Donau-Ries district from autumn. You have a choice that is in Bavaria for a long time did not exist and still do not exist in many places. The business school can only be attended regularly from the sixth grade. Since the current school year, the Ministry of Culture has had a trial basis at some locations to accept children directly after primary school.

Around 70 of around 6,200 schools in Bavaria are business schools

Around 400 fifth graders attend an business school as part of the experiment, reports the ministry on request. With a total of more than 110,000 fifth class children in Bavaria, this may not appear much. But what you need to know: In Bavaria there are only about 70 business schools with around 17,000 students. The early starter offer is just a little more than 20 facilities. The ministry evaluates the attempt as a success: six other schools are to be added in autumn. Locations in Swabia are next to Donauwörth Senden, Bad Wörishofen and Nördlingen among others. « The next wave » follows the school year 2026/2027, so a spokeswoman for Minister of Education Anna Stolz (Free Voter) formulates; A rapid pace for the otherwise often sluggish school bureaucracy.

In order to attend the business school, a child needs a grade average of 2.66 – the same as for the junior high school. It prepares for a professional career, in the timetable there are content such as financial accounting, calculation or order processing.

The private business school Donauwörth was ahead of the pilot test and introduced its fifth a year earlier. Many parents would like to appreciate, says headmistress Gabriele Braun, that at the business school you can « get into different directions in a very practice -oriented manner ». Students can choose between modules in the ninth grade, environmental technology, health economy, tourism or robotics. Some of the graduates move to the technical college after graduation.

In Braun’s eyes, the new fifth grade means « real freedom of choice » for families. So far, pupils – or their parents – had had to bridge a year with the business school with the business school. That shot many.

But what the one is happy about triggers fears elsewhere. At the middle and secondary schools, the competition is not well received. They have been warning against this since the beginning of the school attempt. The Bavarian Teachers’ Association fears Even greater pressure on primary school children when transferredif there is a fourth choice. And he worries that the number of students could decrease at middle schools – especially at locations where both types of school exist side by side. A similar fear rampants at the secondary schools. Parents, school management and secondary school teacher association warn that some options can no longer be offered if the number of pupils should decrease. Last year, the secondary schools proudly came from the secondary schools to limit the pilot test to five locations. Now it is even being expanded.

Most children switch to high school

In the Ministry of Culture, one still wants to prevent possible cannibalization between the school types. Individual applications of interested business schools have been put back on a fifth grade – « due to the major impact on neighboring schools that could not be ruled out, » can be heard from the Ministry. « The overall responsibility for all Bavarian schools is kept in view ».

Most recently, the transitional figures in Bavaria were relatively constant. In the current school year, 28.7 percent of fourth graders switched to middle school, 27.9 percent to the junior high school. The most popular was the high school: 39.6 percent of families decided to go to high school. The remaining 3.8 percent repeated the fourth grade, left the school towards unknown or switched to another type of school. The business school, for example.