Germany: the Church’s voice ” “

The Programme for international student assessment (PISA) published in January had relegated German students to 27th place in the world league table of student performance. Reaction to the result was enormous in Germany. It gave rise to much soul-searching, to long and bitter debates, and even the weekly magazine Der Spiegel dedicated a survey in the spring to the poor performance of German students. The bishops of Germany also intervened on the matter. Today more than ever “the consciousness is growing that good schools are the task of society as a whole” given that “schooling, education and the transmission of values to the young shape their future capacity”. With these words the German bishops comment on the results of the PISA study (in a statement released on 10 May). The bishops’ appeal also denounced the difficult situation experienced by Catholic schools. The decrease in state funding, the difficulties of building new schools with institutional support and the attempt to condition school curricula, all concurred to give the impression that the administrative independence, and even the raison d’être, of Catholic schools was under threat in some Laender. Catholic schools in Germany are funded by compulsory church tax, by their own Foundations, by the contributions of parents and by public grants. At the present time there are 1137 Catholic schools in Germany. They are attended by some 350,000 students. They are distributed throughout the country, with the highest concentration in Westphalia (323 schools and 119,000 students) and the lowest in Schleswig-Holstein (only 2 schools and 270 students). They may be run by religious orders, dioceses, mission-aid societies, foundations, educational associations and ecclesial communities, which each give to the schools they run the stamp of their own cultural and educational tradition. According to the bishops, the social relevance of Catholic schools obliges the State to provide a “sustainable contribution to non-state running costs and to the maintenance of teachers”. Again according to the Church, Catholic schools have a “capacity for moral guidance and for instilling values that create spiritual independence and security in the individual”. This “capacity” is crucial “for the burning ethical problems of contemporary society, which is faced by the task of evaluating the effects of what is ethically and economically feasible.”