Today’s post is up a little later than usual and that’s because we had one hell of a busy week and this morning was no different. In fact, it was the day of Amy’s school entrance exam and I’ve been rushing around like a blue arse fly. So this week’s pic shows her on our way to her future primary school – happily singing and jumping around with my umbrella.
If you’ve got no idea what a school entrance exam is and why we have them here in Germany, read on. I’ll try and explain a bit about them:
School entrance exams in the German school system
As Amy just about ‘escaped’ school in the UK, I have no idea if there actually is a school entrance exam in the UK but there is over here in Germany. In fact, there are two. The first one is the medical school entrance exam. It looks at your child’s physical development (e.g weight, height, hearing ability and eyesight, postural control and defects), their motor skills, cognition and speech.
Once your child has passed the medical exam, your chosen primary school invites you and your child to attend a skills-based school entrance exam that helps the teachers determine if your child is ready for mainstream schooling, if it has any deficits that can be worked on, if they should start school a year later or if an alternative path to schooling would be a better option for them.
Amy’s school entrance exam
Amy attended the school-based school entrance exam today and all in all it lasted about 1.5 hours. First up, the kids were divided into groups of 6 and led into a classroom with 4 teachers. I wasn’t present for this part, but during the one-on-one consultation with each parent, two teachers explained what the kids had to do.
Their activities basically concentrated on spatial awareness, pen grip, being able to talk about a scenario they were given, completing patterns, making up rhymes, numeracy and pre-writing skills as well as some simple motor skills like jumping up and down stairs on one leg or similar.
Amy did great with most of them and funnily, none of the four teachers noticed that German is not her native language. When they mentioned the odd difficulty with rhyming and prepositions and I told them that only speaking German for a little longer than two years might be the reason for it, they were super surprised. Overall, they were very happy with her performance and see no reason why she shouldn’t start school in September. Yay!
What did you and your kids get up to last week? Let me know in the comments below and check out all the other Living Arrows post over on Donna’s blog by clicking the badge below.
Well done amy, thats awesome – though a little intense for her. I’m glad she did so well #livingarrows
What a fab idea! I would have loved it if we had something similar over here – it would make it so much more individualised for children and would really help parents know if their children were ready for school or not! #livingarrows
It’s good that in Germany there is a much more flexible approach to starting school based on your child’s development. I know over here in the UK a lot of people worry about whether their children are ready for school – I guess these exams take that worry away at least a little x
Absolutely, plus children start aged 6/7 over here, so they’ve had two years longer to develop and play. I really love that x
very well done Amy – not .long until you start school. I bet you are very excited. I like discovering the differences between our two countries x