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germankitty March 19 2013, 21:26:43 UTC
Traditionally, with a Hauptschulabschluss you go into the trades, sales, office clerking or (broadly) the service industry, like hairdressing. ALL of these require a three-year apprenticeship with additional, concurrent attendance at vocational school -- where you'll learn the tricks of the trade, like bookkeeping, typing, techniques, about the materials you're working with and so on.

Realschule was for nursing, middle management in general and mid-level civil service. (Working for the then still state-run train and postal services counted as civil service.)

Top-level civil service, all university careers and top-level management -- in banking, say -- required the Abitur.

Generally, it's important to bear in mind that quite a number of professions that require a college education in the US -- nursing, bookkeeping and law enforcement come to mind -- are still run on an apprenticeship model, with appropriate final exams giving you the trade board (and equivalents') qualifications.

However, things were beginning to change in the 1970s.

It was around that time when most of the states decided to offer more kids, especially with a working-class, blue-collar bacground, the chance at getting the Abitur and a university education. Schoolbooks were free, and costs for public transport (in lieu of school buses) were fully subsidized, for example. Unfortunately, it (almost inevitably) resulted in a slight decline in academic standards, simultaneous with a surplus/restriction in certain university subjects, like Medicine, for example. As a consequence, increasing numbers of Abitur students forewent further education altogether and opted for the higher-paid clerical job paths, inevitably edging out the Realschul kids who would've traditionally chosen those careers. And yes, that trend continued "downwards" to Hauptschule, whose graduates couldn't get apprenticeships unless their grades were exceptional or they displayed great aptitude in a certain field to prospective employers.

The Hauptschulen (traditionally ending after year 9, which in turn was only introduced in the 1960s; my cousin, who's 4 years older than me, was among the first to complete a mandatory 9 years instead of only 8) then started adding a voluntary 10th year for the best and brightest, giving you the "Hauptschulabschluss mit Qualifikation" -- basically the equivalent of a Realschulabschluss with all the advantages thereof. (It has become the norm nowadays.) Unfortunately, it took quite a few years for those students to overcome the stigma of having attended "just Hauptschule" -- or rather, Realschule clung to its cachet of being something better than Hauptschule well into the 1980s.

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nightrose83 March 19 2013, 22:02:53 UTC
Thank you. I want to be sure that I have that understood in a basic way, so please excuse me as I spit things back out to ensure it's correct. It probably won't be, but I wanted to try.

So, traditionally, if someone wanted to be, say, a hairdresser, that would be a Hauptschulabschluss, plus going to a vocational school for three years. If someone decided they wanted to be a nurse, that would be something to go to a Realschule for, as well as an apprenticeship.

Then in the 70s the state governments decided to give people that would have had traditionally 'lower' types of education a chance to go on to get better certification/education, so the Hauptschule went from 8 to 9 years in duration, with a tenth (which I'm now guessing is the standard regardless?) being reserved for the good students. Academic standards declined a bit with that, and universities started placing restrictions on the number of students accepted for subjects like medicine, so even if some people had their Abitur, they started going for jobs Realschule graduates would have gone for. Hauptschule attendees began qualifying for better things too, so they started getting 'higher' jobs than they may not have traditionally qualified for, but there was a stigma about going to a Hauptschule that lingered into the 80s.

These days, the type of apprenticeship someone may take on after leaving a Real/Hauptschule depends on the type of leaving certificate they've earned, what type of apprenticeship they may be looking for, and in some cases, individual employer.

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germankitty March 19 2013, 22:28:21 UTC
Broadly and basically correct summary, except that mandatory vocational schooling goes with EVERY apprenticeship. If a job/career is accredited as an "Ausbildungsberuf" with proper training by a master or journeyman certified to train others, you get on-the-job training with only a basic wage as well as vocational training both in generalities like bookkeeping, customer relations, sales techniques and whatnot, plus additional schooling in German and Maths, possibly English. Used to be it was one day of vocational school each week, with regular school holidays (which would be spent at the workplace), but I think it's block schooling nowadays, something like 3 months continuously.

It may be surprising to non-Germans, but a gas station attendant does a proper apprenticeship; a pedicurist doesn't (to give just two examples). We have qualified waiters who went through an apprenticeship, and waiters who basically just shift food from kitchen to table -- and their respective wages will reflect that: A trained waiter will have a monthly salary plus tips, a server maybe a (very low) fixed daily sum plus whatever they get in tips.

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nightrose83 March 19 2013, 22:35:26 UTC
Ah, thank you. So once you have an apprenticeship secured (regardless of whether you're in a Hauptschule or Realschule), you're going to school and also attending an apprenticeship at the same time? I'm also unfamiliar with "Ausbildungberuf" and Google's giving me all German pages about it.

I was unaware of that; my parents were gas station attendants throughout my childhood, and here the best you may get is a week's worth of 'here's how you use the pump, don't annoy the customer,' and that's about it. It depends on where you go here, but attendants will also pump the gas for you--they don't allow you to pump your own (I guess too many people messed with the pumps). Is that the same as in Germany, or would you pump it yourself?

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antrazi March 19 2013, 22:50:40 UTC
The name for that would be "Tankwart" and pumping gas is just one tiny point. They also do small car repairs, service, book keeping... they basically learn everything to run a gas station on their own.
And as far as I'm aware, most people here pump their gas themselves

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germankitty March 19 2013, 22:51:08 UTC
An "Ausbildungsberuf" is a job/career/vocation that is accredited in the so-called "dual system" -- ie, on-the-job training going hand in hand with vocational school. That's the only option if you want to train non-adults. This is a pretty comprehensive list of all these careers in Germany -- for example, I had no idea that diamond cutter, gem polisher and gem engraver are three SEPARATE careers, each with its own exams and stuff!

And being a gas station attendant here involves not only pumping gas, but selling all kinds of things, basic car maintenance, ability to do simple repairs, knowledge of fuel types ... and actually, pumping gas went by the wayside in the late 70s. :) Lately, a few of the bigger gas stations will have someone do the pumping for you IF WANTED/NEEDED, but strictly as a courtesy or extra service for the elderly, say.

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nightrose83 March 19 2013, 22:56:09 UTC
Good God, that's a lot of career types. I just want to be sure I have it totally clear--if you wanted to be a nurse in the 70s, your path would have been Realschule + apprenticeship+ mandatory vocational school for the last 3 years (or possibly Hauptschule/Gymnasium as long as you did up to year 10 and got the proper certificate at the end)?

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lizzardgirl March 19 2013, 23:05:10 UTC
Yes, with the caveat that nurses, like some other careers, have special nursing schools that they go to, as opposed to the standard vocational schools.

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germankitty March 19 2013, 23:06:35 UTC
In the 1970s? Definitely Realschule/Gymnasium year 10 for nursing, and they were veering to making Abitur a prerequisite. NO Hauptschüler, sorry -- at least not for the full 3-year apprenticeship/training course. (I can't say exactly when the Hauptschule year 10 qualification was introduced; it was around the 1970s, though, that's all I remember.)

Possibly a Hauptschulabschluss (year 9) might've been enough for the 2-year track, making you a Nurse's Aide -- trained to do most aspects of actual nursing, but not qualified to give intravenous injections or assist during operations, for example. (This career may have been phased out since then in favor of the full course, I dunno.)

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nightrose83 March 19 2013, 23:07:22 UTC
Ah, okay, thank you. :)

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lizzardgirl March 19 2013, 22:53:15 UTC
The thing is, even if you don't have an apprenticeship secured, you're obliged to attend school until the end of the school-year in which you turned 18, so when you finish year ten, you're looking at another 2-3 years in school in any case.

They have special classes at vocational schools for those students who need to be schooled but don't have any apprenticeship or internship or anything lined up, or those who dropped out of training or were kicked out. These days, they try to do in-school training programmes in, say, the school kitchens, to give these students at least a little of a leg-up in trying to find any position or new apprenticeship, but they can't always start these programmes or get all of them into it, so there's always classes that basically just have to sit around in school every day without any perspective.

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nightrose83 March 19 2013, 23:01:06 UTC
Thank you. I'm not sure if the length someone needs/needed to attend school has gone up over time or not; so, regardless of what type of secondary school you attend, you need to stay until you're 18? I think someone told me in the past that you could have also repeated a grade, but you can still drop as long as you're old enough to do so.

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antrazi March 19 2013, 22:37:43 UTC
If you have 1 to 2 days vocational school a week or block schooling depends mostly on the specific Ausbildungsberuf and how many students and schools for that actually exist. There are some Berufe who have only a few vocational schools, so every student has to go for a few weeks and they have people with considerable driving distances that would make the other system to hard.

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germankitty March 19 2013, 22:54:16 UTC
Oh, okay ... I have very few friends who didn't get their Abi (and it's been a long time since school to boot), so I was only peripherally aware of the changes in that area. Plus, I live in the Ruhrgebiet, so long distances etc were never an issue. Thanks!

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nightrose83 March 19 2013, 23:04:44 UTC
So block schooling would be where you go for a few days out of the week to vocational school while attending a 'normal' school, or would you just be going to vocational school exclusively and then returning to 'normal' school afterwards?

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antrazi March 19 2013, 23:13:19 UTC
Block schooling is still a vocational school, it's just different that you have school for a few weeks (possibly even as a boarding school variation) instead of the 1 to 2 days a week of other careers.
During the apprenticeship you only go to your vocational school, no other "normal" school. There you learn everything specific to your chosen career as well as the basics independent if career

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