Gymnasium

The Gymnasium is the academic route through German secondary education. It runs from grade 5 to grade 12 or 13 and ends in the Abitur, the qualification that opens every German university and, in principle, every subject in them.

Eight years or nine

Whether the Abitur comes at the end of grade 12 or grade 13 depends on the state, and this is the part of the German system that has changed most in living memory. Most states shortened the Gymnasium from nine years to eight in the 2000s; a number have since moved back, or now offer both and let the family choose. Check the state, not the country.

What is taught

The full academic range: German, mathematics, English, physics, chemistry, biology, geography, history, civics, computer science, art, music and sport, with philosophy or ethics alongside religion. A second foreign language is compulsory, normally from grade 6 — French, Latin or Spanish most often — and a third is usually available as an option.

The last two or three years are the gymnasiale Oberstufe, where the class timetable gives way to a system of courses at basic and advanced level. Pupils choose advanced subjects, and those choices, together with the final examinations, produce the Abitur grade.

The Abitur

The Abitur is the allgemeine Hochschulreife — the general higher education entrance qualification. The final mark combines the results of the last two years with the leaving examinations, so it is an assessment of a period rather than of one week, and it is expressed on a scale where 1.0 is the best attainable.

It qualifies the holder for any German university. It does not by itself guarantee a place on any particular course: popular subjects restrict entry by grade, and medicine in particular is competitive by a distance.

The same qualification by another route

A Berufliches Gymnasium teaches the same Oberstufe alongside a vocational specialism — business, engineering, health, social care — and awards the same Abitur. It is usually entered after the mittlere Reife rather than at grade 5, which makes it one of the main ways into a university for somebody who did not go to a Gymnasium at ten.

That is worth saying plainly, because the branch at the end of the Grundschule looks more final than it is: the routes are set out in the overview of the system, and several of them end at the same place.

Arriving from another country

Entry depends on the state authority’s assessment of the school record so far, and on German. The Gymnasium teaches demanding subject matter in German to native speakers, so a pupil arriving without the language is normally placed in a preparatory class first and moves across subject by subject.

For anyone planning the university route from abroad, the German is not a formality to be dealt with later. It is the entry requirement to the school that awards the qualification.