Germany uses a 5- or 6-point grading scale (GPA) to evaluate academic performance for the youngest to the oldest students.
In end-of-year report cards, only unmodified integer grades may be used; in some regions they are written in text form.
Many states currently also prescribe the use of behaviour-based notes (Kopfnoten), which grade things such as Orderliness or General Behaviour.
For law students at German universities, a similar system to the 1 to 5 scale is used that comprises one more grade that is inserted between 2 (gut) and 3 (befriedigend), named vollbefriedigend.
A matter of particular interest for those considering studying abroad or even enrolling full-time in a German university is the conversion of grades.
While the below information may prove useful, it is recommended to contact the interested university directly to inquire which method they use to convert grades.
One such system, used by most universities in North Rhine-Westphalia and Bavaria[citation needed], is called the "Modified Bavarian Formula":[3] [4] [5]
For all of the different subjects there were further recommendations with even more specific descriptions in relation to the general grading scale.
At public schools in Germany, teachers are supposed to evaluate students against fixed course-specific criteria, but often feel implicit pressure to grade students on a curve where grades are awarded based on performance relative to all other individuals rather than performance relative to the difficulty of a specific course.
Specifically, in the 2008 case of Sabine Czerny, a Bavarian primary school teacher, Czerny thought that 91% of the class would be able to make a successful transition into a Realschule or a Gymnasium (high schools for which normally only about 50% of Bavarian children qualify based on their educational achievements).
Czerny claims that her students' results stood up in cross-classroom tests; nonetheless she was transferred to another school.
Often the German grades are treated like an interval scale to calculate means and deviations for comparisons.
Even though it lacks any psychometric standardization, the grading system is often compared to normally distributed norm-referenced assessments.
[citation needed] Using an expected value of 3 and a standard deviation of 1, transformations into other statistical measures like Percentiles, T, Stanine etc.
Substantially more German students fail exams in university than in other countries (usually about 20–40%, often even more)[citation needed].
This might be one reason for the low graduation rates at university in international comparisons, as well as for the small number of people who obtain an "Abitur" in the first place.
However, several empirical psychological studies show that the grades awarded in Germany at school and university have a high reliability when taking up higher education and research jobs.
[11] One study from 1995 found that GPAs from school are a mild (weak) predictor for success in university and to a slightly better degree for success in vocational trainings, and that GPAs from school or university have nearly no predictive value for job performance.