(Cultivated; 05-03; p.3)

Analysed by degrees, the following picture emerges:
• about 10% of all pupils reach no degree in their schools' career, about 60% get a middle-ranking degree and about 30% the high degree of Abitur;
• one half of employees has a vocational degree or a specific vocational education, a further 15% has some higher form of vocational degree e.g. as a master of craftsmanship or a polytechnic degree and about 10% do have a university degree.

Such results are not really astonishing as they are in line with the economical requirements of a developed industrial and services-orientated country.
If one regards however the class-specific patterns of education, one finds remarkable continuities over the years: the higher the degree, the more dominant the percentage of children belonging to higher vocational and this way as well educational classes.

R Geißler calls this the effect of a "social filter": "One part of social selection therefore depends on differences of achievements between children of different social layers; but for both societies [Geißler differentiates between East and West Germans as two societies; editorial note] it is valid to say that the manifest potential for achievements of children belonging to the lower layers is not fully exhausted." (ibid., p. 356; translated, original in German)
This filter does prove ineffective only on the level of university education, even if there economical constraints become a concern for lower classes (cf. ibid., p. 357).

Using a concept of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, R Geißler explains (continuity of) societal position by two factors, the ability to dispose of "educational capital" - "capital scolaire" - and of "inherited cultural capital" - "capital culturel hérité". The latter mentioned does not denote primarily the fact of being a club member, but class specific patterns of socialisation and so of behaviour.
Apart from measurable - and plausibly explainable - differences in achievements, there are more subtle forms of social exclusion that class-specifically define careers and this way conjure up continuities.
(read on here)