ABSTRACT
The early 1960s were characterized by the energetic efforts to realize the objectives of the 1959 Law. In 1964 the Hamburg Agreement generally consolidated the attempts made at standardization by its Dusseldorf predecessor. It made the raising of the school leaving age to give nine years of compulsory school attendance binding on all Lander. The Ministry of Education reported early in 1960 on the sponsorship of school classes and youth groups by trade union 'brigades' and made various recommendations as to how such liaisons could be improved. The 1959 Law had embodied a reaffirmation of the social objectives of educational policy in the DDR, namely the removal of the educational privilege which it was alleged existed in the Federal Republic. In the DDR the Marxist objectives, both, in their social and economic aspects, demanded a rationalization of the system of the kind that was largely effected during the early 1950s.
