The SPD wants children to study longer together, reckoning that slower ones will benefit.
In Rhineland-Palatinate, the SPD's Kurt Beck is the only premier to govern without a coalition partner.
Berlin's coalition of the SPD and the ex-communist Left Party could fall in September.
The new leader, Sigmar Gabriel, the SPD's seventh chairman in 11 years, looks an unlikely healer.
ECONOMIST: The venerable but defeated SPD picks a new champion
The Social Democratic Party (SPD) led the government that took Germany into the war.
SPD, she will lose her image as a leader capable of rising above political adversity.
The SPD suffers from being locked in a grand coalition with Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats.
It has feuded internally over reforms enacted by the grand coalition and its predecessor, an SPD-Green government.
The SPD could well win more votes than the disastrous 25% or so now predicted by polls.
And, thanks to the German SPD, the issue of a federal Europe has again raised its head.
Mrs Merkel hopes to get enough votes to replace the SPD with the pro-market Free Democrats (FDP).
The centre-left SPD has been the junior partner in Mrs Merkel's coalition for the past four years.
They know what's coming and still they are avoiding the SPD and flocking to the free-market FDP.
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SPD's coalition partners, the Greens, who have just celebrated their 25th anniversary, have also gained ground recently.
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Ms Merkel remains a strong favourite to defeat the SPD candidate (and foreign minister), Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in September.
SPD's left wing has shown itself much less willing to accept compromises in order to stay in government.
But the gathering of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Dresden on November 13th-15th was anything but routine.
ECONOMIST: The venerable but defeated SPD picks a new champion
He is popular without being populist and is widely touted as a prospective SPD chancellor of the future.
What happens this year and next will be decisive, says Rainer Arnold, an SPD member of the Bundestag.
The election is still a year away and the SPD wanted to spare its candidate a prolonged grilling.
Fear of the impending election seems to be pushing the SPD further to the left, at least rhetorically.
Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD) had its worst result since the war, winning less than 21% of the vote.
She needs the SPD because her own party is getting restless about bailouts.
SPD, which has seen its popularity slide even as Ms Merkel harvests the credit for all the government's successes.
He and other SPD heavyweights started signalling that he would be willing to step aside for the right price.
In other words, the SPD can't be both in government and in opposition.
The SPD had ruled out governing with the Left Party after this election.
The SPD entered the grand coalition with an acute case of reformers' remorse.
ECONOMIST: Germany's chancellor: Merkel is the message | The
Chancellor Merkel's success is also due in part to the weakness of her main challenger, the SPD candidate Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
SPD's chances at any new election, so it may yet prove readier to agree to a deal with Ms Merkel.
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