Overview

• Classes resume next week for about 2.5 million students, including roughly 174,000 first‑graders, with schools choosing Wednesday or Thursday for enrollments.
• To strengthen basic skills, a digital writing tool called Skribi will be piloted at 100 primary schools from autumn to support handwriting, text feedback and spelling, with an additional German‑learning program for newly arrived pupils.
• There will be no regular Abitur cohort at Gymnasien in 2026 because of the G8‑to‑G9 switch, yet students at Gesamtschulen and Berufskollegs can still earn university entrance and repeaters may sit exams.
• Feller put the 2026 Abitur output at about 32,000 from those other school types and projected well over 70,000 the following year when the first G9 Gymnasium cohort graduates.
• About 2,500 Gymnasium teachers on temporary ‘Vorgriffstellen’ must return to Gymnasien in summer 2026 as part of wider staffing strains that include well over 10,000 secondments this year, roughly 7,000 vacancies and a total need of about 171,600 positions.