Furthermore I ask for some consequences and problems for the education for democracy or for political education, which I use as similar terms. Some aspects of the German debate are probably similar to those in other countries, others might be rather typical for the German situation. The German school system is on the one hand decentralized and on the other hand centralized. On the level of the nation state there is a conference of ministers of education where a lot of agreements are made, for example regulations for school examinations in higher education. Nevertheless in some ways we have 16 different school systems in Germany.
Teachers are civil servants.
All decisions concerning fundamental structures of the school systems as well as many decisions concerning details of regulations and financing schools are made on a centralized level. All these aspects of centralization are under attack in the recent German debate on education policy. It is interesting to see that very often the ministries of education themselves try to initiate processes of deregulation and decentralization and in many cases against the opposition of teachers and schools. In some ways this reminds of the reforms in Prussia at the beginning of the 19th century where a reform-oriented bureaucracy tried to modernize the country by setting it free. School autonomy is one of the slogans in the recent debate.