`Universities have added to the pressure in Germany to stop schools setting and marking their own leaving exams. They want to see all students in a state take the same, centrally-set exam.
Klaus Landfried, president of the conference of university vice-chancellors, said a central Abitur would introduce much-needed transparency into the exam system - at present a hotch-potch of school-based and board exams which makes it impossible to compare the performance of students across Germany.
The idea has public backing: an opinion poll in August found 72 per cent of Germans favoured a central Abitur. Only 19 per cent favoured school-based exams.
Discontent with school-based exams spread after a study showed that the seven states using a central Abitur - Bavaria, Baden-Wuerttemberg, Mecklenberg-Pomerania, Saarland, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia - performed better in literacy and science skills than the other nine.
The seven states use the same Abitur, drawn up by a commission of teachers and state education ministry officials.
School-based exams are set by the teachers within a school and marked by them and a second teacher. Some papers are checked by the state education authority. The system is seen as less bureaucratic and prescriptive than the central Abitur and is cheaper, as it does not require outside examiners.
But heads say grades in school-based exams in states such as North Rhine Westphalia are not reliable as a performance indicator.
Christoph Heilmann, principal of Flick high school in Kreuztal, North Rhine Westphalia, said: “If the teacher - and not some neutral body - devises the tests for graduation, nobody can tell to what extent a teacher has coached his students specially. Right away that opens the door to cheating. ” An eighth state, Brandenburg, has now decided to introduce a central Abitur from 2005. “We must be able to compare the performance of our pupils,” said its education minister, Steffen Reiche. Hesse and Lower Saxony say they will follow suit. Berlin will use a central exam in core subject - German, maths and the first foreign language - from 2006, leaving other subjects to be examined by the school.
In most states Abitur students do four subjects - two main subjects and two others (lowers). German is often compulsory. Some school-based systems use continuous assessment instead of a final exam.
