Germany is facing a deepening education crisis linked to migration, according to a report published by the Catholic aid organisation Malteser.
The 116-page study, authored by Freiburg economist Professor Lars Feld of the Walter Eucken Institute, warns that children from migrant backgrounds are falling significantly behind their classmates in schools, raising fears of long-term social and economic consequences.
The report, seen by daily Bild, highlights that more than one in three pupils in Germany has a migration background. Yet outcomes differ starkly: in 2023, 74% of residents over the age of 15 without any school qualification were of migrant origin, while almost half of those without vocational training also came from migrant families.
“Compared with their peers, children from immigrant families achieve worse results in mathematics and science. This must not be allowed to continue,” Professor Feld said.
Language is identified as a decisive factor. Many children do not speak German at home, and in 2024, 14% of those in publicly funded childcare spoke no German at all.
Enrolment in preschool also shows a great divide: 99% of three- to six-year-olds without a migrant background attended kindergarten in 2023, compared with just 77% of those from migrant families.
Sebastian Schilgen, managing director of the aid group, warned: “Those in Germany who leave school or job training without a qualification disproportionately come from an immigrant background. We cannot be content with this.”
The findings echo broader concerns about declining education standards. A recent study by the German Economic Institute (IW) found that states with higher shares of pupils from non-German-speaking households perform worse. In Bremen, where nearly 60% of children grow up with another mother tongue, a quarter of foreign pupils leave school without qualifications, compared with 17.8% nationwide.
As we previously reported, a teacher in North Rhine-Westphalia said it is nearly impossible to teach in classrooms where almost all pupils come from migrant families.
Concerns about behaviour and safety also loom large. Government figures show that nearly 40% of suspects in school-related violence cases in 2024 were foreign nationals, with more than 700 knife incidents reported nationwide.
