The ifo Education Survey: An ifo Survey on Public Preferences for Education Policy in Germany

The survey asks large representative samples of the adult population – over 4,000 participants per wave – about their opinion on education and education policies. Each year, the survey covers about 30 questions on topics at all relevant educational stages ranging from early childhood education and school policies to the apprenticeship system, universities, and lifelong learning. Each survey wave examines a specific focus topic – for example, education policies to integrate refugees in the 2016 wave or education policies during the Covid-19 pandemic in the 2020 wave.

The questionnaire of the ifo Education Survey is designed by the scientific team of the ifo Center for the Economics of Education. The actual implementation of the survey is carried out by different polling firms. The first four waves were surveyed both online and offline. Since 2018, the ifo Education Survey is conducted online-only. In addition to the representative sample of the German voting-age population, some waves include oversamples covering special interest groups such as parents, teachers, and adolescents.