What is the best way of measuring improvements in a school system? Grades, perhaps; or the proportion of students getting a high-school diploma. In Germany, though, it may be the number of cafeterias in schools. Hundreds are being built in a nationwide effort to create the infrastructure that will allow schools to operate all day so that children can spend more time learning, instead of being sent home in time for a hot lunch. Yet this construction activity also shows how far Germany still has to go to modernise its school system, and to turn it into an efficient engine for promoting talent and brains. German schools are superb at separating insiders from outsiders. But in so doing, they squander the human capital that the country needs to prosper.
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