The Schooling Choices of Privileged German Families

Karen Lillie

Choosing where to educate one’s children is an important and complex decision. It often takes into account a child’s strengths and ambitions, the family’s educational background, and priorities around staying local or going abroad, among other things. For financially privileged German families, these questions are particularly complex. There is no one educational path that those families follow (as is more the case in the US and UK, for example), but rather a variety of options that include public schools, progressive schools, international schools, and boarding schools, to name just a few. This project maps why such families make certain educational decisions, and what this reveals about German society at large.