Berlin's Controversial Gymnasium Entry Exam Tasks to Be Pre-Tested With Pupils for the First Time

Berlin's gymnasium entry test, the Probeunterricht, has drawn sustained criticism after only 15 of 1,223 participating children — 1.2% — passed in the most recent sitting, with similarly poor results the year before. Education Senator Katharina Günther-Wünsch (CDU) has now agreed to pre-test exam questions at selected gymnasiums in different Berlin districts before the next official round, in a process known as 'piloting' that Brandenburg and other states have practised for years. Feedback from the pilot schools will be used to moderate questions and remove the most extreme outliers, with the aim of raising the pass rate to a realistic level. Previously the education administration had refused to pilot tasks or to share detailed result analyses with parliament and parent representatives. The very low pass rate also sharply depressed the number of applicants for the current academic year — around 800 fewer children registered than in the preceding round. Even pupils with straight-A grades have failed the test, prompting the parents' council and members of parliament to demand structural reform. The article published on 22 October 2026 in Tagesspiegel notes that the specific schools chosen to conduct the pilot have not been disclosed by the administration.