The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2025 evaluates what students know and can do in science, reading, mathematics and computational problem-solving, assessing how effectively they can apply their knowledge to real-world challenges. The assessment also explores a range of broader competencies, attitudes and behaviours, including curiosity, perseverance and the use of artificial intelligence. PISA results provide valuable insights into the quality and equity of learning outcomes around the world, enabling educators and policymakers to learn from each other’s policies and practices. This country note provides a country-specific overview of Germany.

Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have been among the OECD countries with the strongest growth in international student enrolment over the last decade. International students have significantly contributed to enrolment growth, shaped campus life and, in some countries, institutional finances. This report examines the journey and challenges of international students, from choosing where and what to study and obtaining a study visa/permit, to adapting academically, finding housing, integrating into local communities, progressing in their studies and navigating post-graduation pathways. After strong growth through the 2010s and a rebound after the COVID-19 pandemic, international student mobility is entering a more uncertain phase, with some countries tightening policies while others continue to expand international enrolment. By comparing six major OECD study destinations, the report highlights both shared challenges and emerging policy responses. It provides timely evidence on trends, challenges and policy responses related to international student enrolment at a time of growing public and policy attention. It is relevant for policymakers, higher education institutions and other stakeholders.

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) has the potential to address a range of goals, yet delivering on the potential of ECEC requires a workforce that is equipped and motivated to meet the unique demands of facilitating young children’s development, learning and well-being. The OECD Starting Strong Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS Starting Strong) focuses on the ECEC workforce. In 2024, ECEC staff and leaders in 17 countries and subnational entities shared insights into a wide range of topics, including their working conditions, professional development opportunities and their work with young children.

Education at a Glance is the authoritative source of information on the state of education worldwide. It offers comprehensive data on the structure, financing, and performance of education systems across OECD countries and partner economies. This publication features more than 100 charts and tables that present key insights into the output of educational institutions, the impact of learning across countries, access and participation in education, financial investment in education, and the roles of teachers and school organisation. The 2025 edition places a special focus on tertiary education, examining attainment rates, variations in labour market outcomes by field of study, completion rates, and the skills of adults with tertiary qualifications.

The Survey of Adult Skills offers unique insights on adults’ proficiency in literacy, numeracy, and problem solving. These skills are crucial for both personal and societal success, and form the foundation for continuous learning and innovation. In 2022-23, the survey assessed adults aged 16-65 in 31 countries and economies. By comparing results over time and with those of other participating countries and economies, participants can track the skill levels of its adult population, pinpoint barriers to skill development and use, and craft effective policies to address these challenges.

The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) examines what students know in reading, mathematics and science, and what they can do with what they know. It provides the most comprehensive and rigorous international assessment of student learning outcomes to date. Results from PISA indicate the quality and equity of learning outcomes attained around the world, and allow educators and policy makers to learn from the policies and practices applied in other countries. This country note provides a country-specific overview of Germany.

Brandenburg's economy is undergoing structural change, which opens exciting new prospects for highly skilled workers. The state has intensified efforts to diversify the economy towards cleaner and more knowledge-intensive industries, including the development of advanced manufacturing, spill-over effects from the start-up scene in Berlin, fostering entrepreneurial activities at its own higher education institutions, promoting innovative places for working and living, and phasing out of coal production in favour of next-generation technologies. As the engine of skills development and research, the higher education system will play an important role in helping the state unleash these opportunities. The German State of Brandenburg has therefore entrusted the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development - in close collaboration with and supported by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Structural Reform Support - with the development of recommendations on how to enhance the visibility of its institutions' programme offer, align this offer with the skills and innovation demand, and make it more attractive to prospective students from the state and beyond.

Ageing populations and rising skill demands have heightened expectations that higher education systems will widen their offer of continuing education and training (CET) for adults aiming to renew or augment their skills at an advanced level. CET is becoming increasingly important for maintaining a highly skilled workforce also in Germany, and particularly in the state of Brandenburg. However, Brandenburg’s public higher education institutions have so far been only marginal providers. To expand their offer of CET, they would require more legal certainty about the use of public funding in light of European Union (EU) state aid policy. EU state aid policy ensures public subsidies (state aid) are not used by state agencies to crowd out markets (economic activity). There are no clear EU, federal or state-level directions about whether CET is a non-economic activity and thus exempt from EU state aid rules. This report analyses the reasons for this legal uncertainty and provides recommendations to the state government and public higher education institutions in Brandenburg about how to clarify the status of continuing education and training as a state-aided activity. It also proposes pointers for interpretation and future reform of the EU framework on state aid, and provides impulses for policy action in other German states and at the federal level.

This country policy profile on education in Germany is part of the Education Policy Outlook series. Building on the first policy profile for Germany (2014), it offers a concise analysis of where the education system stands today in terms of strengths, challenges and ongoing policy efforts, and how this compares to other systems. The profile brings together over a decade's worth of policy analysis by the Education Policy Outlook, as well as the latest OECD data, relevant thematic and country-specific work and other international and national evidence. It also provides insight into approaches to building greater responsiveness and resilience for the future.

The OECD Skills Outlook 2017 shows that skills matter for global value chains. The report presents new analyses based on the Survey of Adult Skills, a product of the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), and the Trade in Value Added Database. It develops a Scoreboard on Skills and Global Value Chains with the objective to measure the extent to which countries have been able to make the most of GVCs through the skills of their populations in terms of skills, global value chains, and social and economic outcomes. It also explains what countries would need to do to specialise in technologically advanced industries.

This Data Spotlight note on Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) provides a summary of ECEC policy inputs, outputs and outcomes in Germany. It uses data available within the OECD Secretariat - Education at a Glance, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the OECD Family Database - to make comparisons between Finland's ECEC system and the systems in other OECD countries. This note complements the 2015 OECD publication, Starting Strong IV: Monitoring Quality in Early Childhood Education and Care.

The Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend) is responsible for early childhood education and care (ECEC) for children from birth until primary school age (6 years) in family day care and child day care settings in Germany. Responsibility for the licensing of family day care and child day care services is with either regional/state-level authorities or with local municipalities, depending on the Länder (16 federal states). Curriculum frameworks for ECEC are developed at Länder level; all Länder have an integrated curriculum for the whole ECEC age range and beyond, covering for instance ages 0 to 10 years.

This report is an assessment of the programme "Lernen vor Ort" [LvO - "Learning Locally"] initiated by the German federal government in order to support the development of local governance structures in education. LvO ran between 2009 and 2014 in about 40 participating local governments, which were chosen in a competitive process. It aimed at promoting cooperation between local governments and civil society stakeholders, creating sustainable structures in educational monitoring, management and consulting as well as improving local capacities in knowledge management. Besides providing important background information on the German education system and the design of the LvO programme, this study engages in five detailed case studies of the implementation of the LvO programme in different local authorities. The main findings are that LvO can be regarded as a success due to the fact that it had a lasting and probably sustainable impact in the cases studied in this report, in particular with regard to those structures that produce concrete and visible outputs, such as educational monitoring. The case studies also reveal a number of local factors that influence the relative effectiveness of the implementation of the programme. Political leadership and support from the head of the local government are crucial, in particular during critical situations during the implementation. Furthermore, the impact of the programme was particularly positive, when the process of local implementation was characterised by clear communication strategies, broad stakeholder involvement in governing bodies and the implementation of concrete goals and projects. However, relative success also depended on important background factors such as local socio-economic conditions as well as financial and administrative capacities, which could not be adressed directly by the programme's goals. The report concludes with some general recommendations and lessons learned of relevance for other countries.

This policy profile on education in Germany is part of the Education Policy Outlook series, which presents comparative analysis of education policies and reforms across OECD countries. Building on the substantial comparative and sectorial policy knowledge base available within the OECD, the series also includes a biennial publication. It develops a comparative outlook on education policy by providing: a) analysis of individual countries' educational context, challenges and policies (education policy profiles) and of international trends and b) comparative insight on policies and reforms on selected topics.

This report examines vocational education and training programs in Germany including how they are changing, how they are funded, how they are linked to academic and university programmes and how employers and unions can be engaged.

Learning for Jobs is an OECD study of vocational education and training designed to help countries make their VET systems more responsive to labour market needs. It expands the evidence base, identifies a set of policy options and develop tools to appraise VET policy initiatives. Germany has a very well developed and widely respected VET system with a strong dual component integrating learning in schools and workplace training. VET policy, design and delivery are strongly supported by social partner engagement and institutionalised VET research capacity. At the same time the German system confronts several challenges: the transition system is costly and suffers from undue fragmentation; more attention could be placed on adequate career guidance and basic skills provision; assessmet is dominated by the Chamber exam; and only very few VET graduates take up univiersty studies despite reforms to open access considerably.

The introductory section of this report provides a brief overview of the German Vocational Education ans Training (VET) system followed by a short description of the three case studies selected for the study. As these form the main focus of the report they are described and discussed in more depth in later sections. The three cases were selected by German officials, in collaboration with the OECD/CERI Secretariat.

The main purpose of the thematic review on adult learning is to understand adults' access and participation in education and training and to enhance policies and approaches to increase incentives for adults to undertake learning activities in OECD countries. It is a joint activity undertaken by the OECD Education Committee (EDC) and the Employment, Labour and Social Affairs Committee (ELSAC) in response to the need to make lifelong learning a reality for all, to improve learning opportunities of low skilled and disadvantaged adults and to sustain and increase employability.

This review covers children from birth to compulsory school age and includes the transition period into primary schooling. In order to examine thoroughly what children experience in the first years of life, the review has adopted a broad, holistic approach to study early childhood policy and provision. To that end, consideration has been given to the roles of families, communities and other environmental influences on children's early learning and development. Particular emphasis has been laid on aspects concerning quality, access and equity, with an emphasis on policy development in the following areas: regulations; staffing; programme content and implementation; family engagement and support; funding and financing.

The report outlines the key contextual factors shaping the school system and the teaching career in Germany in its Section 2. That section also tries to assist international readers by identifying what is distinctive about the teaching workforce and teacher policy in Germany. Section 3 then identifies the main strengths of German teacher policies, but also the challenges and problems that the system faces. Section 4 uses the analysis in the previous sections to discuss priorities for future policy development. Some of these concerns (such as teacher recruitment problems) are fairly recent in origin, but others (such as the structure of teacher education) are more long-standing. The suggestions draw heavily on promising initiatives that the team learned about during the visit. Section 5 has some concluding remarks.

The area of "tertiary education" is broad; its boundaries are not always clear or definite. For purposes of the present review, "tertiary" refers to a level or standard of study, beyond secondary and embracing what participating countries define as both higher education and such aspects of other sectors as seem to meet the definition. Although some ambiguities arise internationally in distinctions drawn between "post-secondary" and tertiary, the focus of the review is quite clear in the case of Germany: it is those institutions that comprise the university sector on the one hand and the Fachhochschulen on the other, hereafter referred to indifferently as higher education or tertiary education.