From 2003, most German states cut the Gymnasium, the academic high school, from nine years to eight. The argument was that German graduates were older than graduates elsewhere. Criticism followed. Students in the shorter course had an average of 34 class hours a week and hardly any free time. In 2014, Lower Saxony became the first state to abandon the eight-year model completely. Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia decided in 2017 to return to nine years, and Schleswig-Holstein followed from 2019. In Baden-Württemberg, a citizens’ forum voted by a large majority to return, and the change began in 2025. In 2025, most Bavarian Gymnasien held no final exams at all, because the first nine-year class had not yet reached its last year.