Stuttgart (dpa / lsw) – On Saturday, a parents’ initiative will start collecting signatures for a popular motion for a return to nine-year high school (G9) in Baden-Württemberg. This was announced by Corinna Fellner and Anja Plesch-Krubner from the “G9 now” initiative on Friday in Stuttgart. They want the Abitur to be generally taken after nine years in the future. In order to make the students more internationally competitive, the time until the Abitur was once reduced to twelve years (G8).
A spokesman for the state parliament said in advance that the start of the collection of signatures had been announced. In order for the draft law to be discussed in plenary, the parents’ initiative needs the signatures of 0.5 percent of all eligible voters within one year. In Baden-Württemberg that would be around 39,000 signatures.
Fellner and Grubner pointed out that in many federal states people had already returned to the Abitur after 13 school years. “We don’t want to be a G8 enclave in Baden-Württemberg,” said Plesch Krubner. Both parents’ representatives went on to explain that the children were under a lot of pressure to perform due to the shorter school days and had little free time. And Michael Mattig-Gerlach from the working group of high school parents’ representatives in the administrative district of Stuttgart said that the quality of the educational content also suffered as a result of the shorter school days. You have to be careful not to get relegated to the second division.
G9 only exists as a model project at a total of 44 state schools in the country and at a few private schools. Green-Black had agreed to keep G8 as the standard form.
