Teachers' Association Warns of Devaluation of Abitur Due to Rising Number of Top Grades

Flood of Top Grades and Its Consequences for Top Performers

The association president speaks in this context of a "grade race" between the federal states. The states are increasingly competing with ever-better average grades for the favor of students and parents. This race can only be stopped "if there is a nationally comparable Abitur with the same tasks and grading criteria," Meidinger continued.

Meidinger is a Gymnasium teacher and heads the German Teachers' Association. He did, however, acknowledge that the performance of today's school-leavers has actually improved in some areas. With a remark about his own English skills, which he rated as considerably weaker compared to today's graduates, he conceded a real increase in performance in certain areas.

Call for a Uniform National Abitur

As early as 2014, Meidinger — in his then role as chairman of the Philologenverband — had warned the Deutsche Presse-Agentur about the consequences of the so-called inflation of top grades. Even then, he said that those actually affected were the top-performing students, whose outstanding achievements are drowned out in the flood of top marks. The current debate picks up on these earlier assessments.

The Teachers' Association's criticism comes at a time when this year's Abitur students are ending their school years. Across Germany this summer, students have taken their Abitur examinations. The assessments of these examinations form the basis for the grades with which school-leavers apply to universities, colleges, and companies offering vocational training.

Debate in the Context of the 2026 Abitur Cohort

Meidinger is therefore demanding structural reforms to safeguard the comparability and value of the Abitur in the long term. A uniform Abitur with centrally set tasks and the same grading standards in all 16 federal states is, in his view, the only way to curb the inflation of top grades and restore meaningful differentiation of performance.

Reports about the Teachers' Association's warning were broadcast on 7 July 2026 on the Deutschlandfunk program. The news originated from the dpa news channel and was picked up by several media outlets. The debate over the meaningfulness of school grades is therefore likely to continue in the coming weeks.

In its criticism, the Teachers' Association sees no across-the-board disparagement of student performance, but rather a warning about the systemic consequences of inflationary grade-giving. When more and more graduates present themselves to universities and employers with top grades, the signaling value of those grades declines — and with it the chance of the truly highest-performing applicants to stand out positively from the crowd.

For the coming years, the association therefore expects a further rise in the number of top-grade certificates, provided nothing changes in the states' current practice. Political responses to Meidinger's call for a nationally uniform Abitur are still pending.