to transform recommendations into law, however - until they are enacted as binding legislation by the parliaments in the 16 Länder.
One thing is similar in all the Länder: the costs of the school system are shared. The costs for school buildings, equipment and also for secretarial and domestic support are tasks of the maintaining bodies Schulträger, e.g: the community, the district or the Land. The funding of teaching staff is the task of the individual Land
Administration of School and Special Educational Needs
School administration is in some Länder structured in a three-tier system, in which the Ministries of Education and Cultural Affairs form the upper tier, the schools' offices of the regional authorities or independently existing upper-level schools' offices form the middle tier, and the schools' offices of the local authorities form the lower tier. In some Länder and in the city-states school administration is based on a two-tier system arrangement. In big Länder as Baden Wuertemberg or North-Rhine Westphalia the school administration is structured in a four-tier system.
The school system in Germany is organised both horizontally and vertically. After 4 years of primary schooling, the system divides into 4 types of schools: 5 years of general secondary schooling; 6 years of intermediate schooling; 9 years of grammar schooling or 9 years of comprehensive schooling which makes up the three other school types and leads to university level education. Besides this, there are the schools for special education. After 9 or 10 years of schooling, vocational training starts. (Please refer to the diagram below). That pattern is the framework for all 16 Länder. In detail it is different for example in Berlin and Brandenburg the primary school lasts for 6 years, in Bavaria there are regularly no comprehensive schools. The cultural sovereignty the Länder leads to these differences. In addition, because of the German unification in 1990, two different school systems had to be unified.
Gymnasien, comprehensive schools, vocational schools and usually also Realschulen are directly answerable to the intermediate regional authorities or the top level of the school supervisory authorities (Ministries of Education and Cultural Affairs), while the much more numerous primary schools, Hauptschulen , certain special schools and, in some Länder, also the Realschulen are the concern of the authorities at the lower level. ("The Education System of the Federal Republic of Germany, KMK, 1995)
The development and organisation of special education in the Länder was harmonised by several decisions adopted by the KMK and especially by the "Recommendations on the Organisation of Special education" (Empfehlung zur Ordnung des Sonderschulwesens; Decision of March 1972) and recommendations for all types of special schools, Sonderschulen. The current situation is documented in the "Recommendation on Special Education in the Schools of the Federal Republic of Germany" (Empfehlungen zur sonderpädagogischen Förderung in den Schulen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Decision of 6. May 1994): "...The education of disabled young people is in principal more and more a co-operative task of all schools. The special education should be understood as a necessary addition and key-element of providing general education." (KMK , 1994, Page 1)
Key-elements of this process are:
- possibilities for special educational support in special schools and in mainstream schools
- awareness raising in dealing with disabled people
- the development of early intervention services
- the development of educational services in Kindergarten and mainstream schools and development of
- possibilities for support, especially in primary schools
- the use of newly developed technical aids
- correction/improvement of assessment and diagnosis
- more sensitivity to the neighbourhood area of the child when finding a school
- more attention to the place of learning and the forms of special education (prevention, integration, special schools, co-operation)
The aim of these recommendations is to