This decision was associated with numerous problems and difficulties in various areas of school life and the necessity to introduce new rules. Due to the global pandemic and the need to introduce social distancing rules, it was decided to close schools and switch to modes of learning that do not require physical contact between learners and teachers. As education policy is the main determinant of English language acquisition (not only in Germany), this information is highly relevant for policy-makers.Īt the beginning of 2020, educational systems around the world faced one of the greatest and most important challenges of the 21st century. Finally, by examining language skills instead of the use of such skills in the workplace, we identify individual returns to foreign languages for the general population. We also show that wage differentials cannot be explained by the value of foreign language skills as a general ability signal, but they are driven by the productive value of foreign language skills. Any remaining sources of endogeneity in the level of language proficiency are addressed by an instrumental variable approach that exploits exogenous variation in individuals’ exposure to foreign language acquisition in school. We address endogeneity issues by using novel data that combine comprehensive information about individuals’ characteristics with fine-grained self-assessments of language skills based on indicators of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). Incremental improvements in the level of skills, e.g., from basic to independent user, increase wages by 11 percent, on average. Using the 20 sample of the German Socio-Economic Panel’s Innovation Sample (GSOEP-IS), we find that native speakers of German with English language skills earn a wage premium of 13 percent, on average. This article explores the relationship between foreign language skills and individuals’ labor income in Germany, focusing on the English language. It is worth recalling that this simplified pattern is derived from the general recommendations made by KMK, but the speed and the intensity of policy implementation are determined by the federal states and by schools at the local level, and they have been subject to different constraints such as availability of teachers ( Doff (2008) ). 12 Thus, the exposure to English lessons in school can, for example, be four (respectively, six) years for children starting at grade 7 (respectively, 5) and completing education at grade 10, and seven (respectively, nine) years for children starting to learn English at grade 7 (respectively, 5) and completing upper secondary education at grade 13. Besides areas near the border with France that taught French first, in certain academic high schools ( Gymnasium ), children may start to study Latin at grade 5, 11 and begin to learn English only later, typically at grade 7 ( Christ (2016) Thaler (2017) ). In fact, not necessarily all pupils within a certain federal state and school track started to learn English at the same grade.
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