Public Schooling in Prussia: Number of Institutions, Teachers, and Pupils (1864-1911/13) Education fell under the purview of Germany’s federal states. Therefore reliable statistics for the entire nation are hard to come by before the turn of the century. Figures for the Kingdom of Prussia nevertheless allow some reasonable estimates because about three-fifths of the German population resided there. School attendance rose dramatically in Prussia at the end of the nineteenth century. Industrialization, urbanization, and rising literacy rates were directly tied to educational advances, which depended in part in reducing class sizes. The first table shows that the number of teachers increased almost three-fold from 1864 to 1901, whereas the number of pupils only doubled. As a result, the pupil-teacher ratio fell from about 92:1 in 1864 to 63:1 in 1901. The second table reflects the situation in public middle-schools, which were intended mainly for children of the lower middle classes but also included the so-called higher girls’ schools. The pupil-teacher ratio in these schools fell from about 41:1 in 1864 to about 30:1 in 1901, with most of the decrease coming in the first fifteen years. The third table cannot adequately account for the many different types of public secondary schools in Prussia and the Reich. In addition to the traditional Gymnasien, where pupils studied Latin, Greek, and other subjects for nine years, there were Realgymnasien and Ober-Realschulen, which offered more modern curricula that focused on the natural sciences and modern languages. Here, we see that the ratio of pupils per teacher did not change dramatically.
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page 1 of 2 I. Public Elementary Schools Year Schools Classes Teachers Pupils Pupils per class Pupils per teacher Pupils per 100 inhabitants 1864 25,056 – 30,805* 2,825,322 – (92) 15 1871 33,120 – 48,211** 3,900,655 – (81) 16 1878 32,299 – 59,493 4,272,199 – 72 16 1882 33,040 65,968 59,917 4,339,729 66 72 16 1886 34,016 75,097 64,750 4,838,247 64 75 17 1891 34,742 82,746 71,731 4,916,476 59 69 16 1896 36,138 92,001 79,431 5,236,826 57 66 16 1901 36,756 104,082 90,208 5,670,870 54 63 16 1906 37,761 115,902 102,764 6,164,398 53 60 16 1911 38,684 128,725 117,162 6,572,140 51 56 (16) * This figure only includes full-time male teachers. The female teachers – 2,815 for 1864 and 3,848 for 1871 – cannot be divided into full-time and substitute teachers; from 1878 onward, this category includes full-time male and female teachers. ** Including part-time substitute teachers, estimated at 2,000. The population figures refer to the respective territory; actual counts only took place in 1864 and 1871; the data used here was generated by the Prussian Statistical Bureau by means of “arithmetic interpolation”; no data was available for 1911: the figure used here is for 1910 and was therefore put in brackets. Sources: Jahrbuch für die Amtliche Statistik des Preußischen Staates [Yearbook of Official Statistics for the Prussian State] (1883): pp. 540, 550–59 (1864-1882); Statistisches Jahrbuch für den Preußischen Staat [Statistical Yearbook for the Prussian State] (1913): pp. 392, 393; (1915): p. 6 (population). Original German data reprinted in Gerd Hohorst, Jürgen Kocka, and Gerhard A. Ritter, Sozialgeschichtliches Arbeitsbuch II [Social History Workbook II], 2nd ed. München: Beck, 1978, p. 157.
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