As early as 1950, and since the 1960s, the GDR school system increasingly included schools and courses for children and adolescents deemed to be high achieving and with special talents. This corresponded to social and, later, above all, economic interests, namely the special requirements of developing young talent and promoting gifted children (Education Act, 1965, Section 18). As early as 1953/54, special schools for children with athletic talent, the Children's and Youth Sports Schools (Kinder- und Jugendsportschulen, KJS), had been set up based on the Soviet model. They combined lessons and training in a set time order, with modified curricula and political and ideological education. These schools operated all day and were materially much better equipped than the schools within general education; some of them had boarding school facilities. As early as the 1950s, at the latest by the start of the 1952/53 school year, special language classes – so-called R-classes – had been set up at some high schools, which offered extended Russian lessons; a special school for foreign languages was later established in Berlin. Also in the 1950s, an extracurricular music programme for gifted children was set up – the people's music schools, known as music schools from 1961 onwards – that offered special early music lessons for interested and musically talented children. At the end of the 1950s, musical special classes were also set up at selected schools, which led to secondary-school graduation (Abitur) and served as preparation for studying music or training as a professional musician. From 1962 onwards, musically gifted pupils and those with above-average talent could be admitted to one of the four special schools for music (Berlin, Dresden, Weimar, Halle) after passing an aptitude test lasting several days. Furthermore, since the second half of the 1960s, there have been special schools with a focus on mathematics, science and technology for grades 9 to 12. At the end of the GDR, there were a total of 11 of these special schools, and around 10% of all EOS graduates came from the various special talent schools and courses (see Schreier, 1996, p. 292). Even if it must be admitted that these schools did not provide any major inspiration for teaching reforms, the selection and individual or exclusive support of gifted pupils, measured by academic success and the disproportionately high number of doctorates, seem to have been successful (see Geißler, 2012, p. 304).