Morning Briefing: Die vertane 21-Billionen-Euro-Chance für den Standort Deutschland

Good morning readers, the most damning accusation leveled against Germany's political center is that the country has regressed to an already poor educational level in the Pisa rankings. Students are losing competencies in reading, math, and sciences over more than a decade. One third of 15-year-olds cannot read or calculate properly, twice as many as in 2015.

Fifteen-year-olds now read at the level of 13-year-olds from a decade ago. Only two out of 100 students from disadvantaged backgrounds reach the upper range in sciences, while 25 out of 100 privileged students do. 52 percent of 15-year-olds learn in schools suffering from teacher shortages, compared to 39 percent on average across OECD countries.

This is a crisis that has been known for 25 years since the first Pisa study, and it threatens Germany's future more than any other issue. Not one party has failed with a faulty concept, but the entire political center: CDU, CSU, SPD, Green, and FDP have collectively failed in their involvement in Germany's most vital resource across the 16 federal states.

Sometimes this is due to ideology over competence, sometimes because they let 16 federal states work against each other on education, and sometimes simply because it never mattered enough to them in coalition negotiations to negotiate with their partner. Looking closer at Germany's schools, the Pisa results and the high AfD first ballot share won't surprise anyone.