Following a year that saw a record-setting two-and-a-half million migrants make their way to Germany, and with current migration projections indicating that another 300-400,000 will arrive in 2023, leading community figures have warned that the sustained influx of immigration has overwhelmed the country’s school system.
One of those community leaders is the Honorary President of the German Teachers’ Association, Heinz-Peter Meidinger, who has warned of worsening levels of learning at schools due to mass migration.
“Since 2015, our schools have taken in around three-quarters of a million additional refugee children—without the necessary additional teachers being available,” Meidinge told the German news outlet BILD.
First-generation immigrants are particularly affected, Meindinge asserted. “Depending on the federal state or test area, [they] often lag behind the expected level of learning by between three-quarters of a school year and two school years,” he added, noting that a study conducted in elementary schools revealed drops in academic performance levels are “considerably greater” in children with a migration background.
Meindinge also highlighted several trends—likely regarded as alarming by broad swaths of society—that have been witnessed in German schools in the past decade. He notes that in that time period, the percentage of fourth-graders with migration backgrounds has risen from 24% to 38%, while the proportion of schoolchildren who only speak German at home has “dropped from 84% to 62%.”
“More and more children who start school cannot follow the lessons due to a lack of German language skills and are left behind,” he said, emphasizing that “in some classes, up to 90 percent of the students do not speak any German at home.”
To remedy the situation, Meindinge’s prescription is “compulsory language tests for all four-year-olds without exceptions.” He argues that “foreign language teaching at elementary schools should be abolished,” and that young kids who “start school should understand and speak German.”
To conclude, the teachers’ association’s honorary chief warned that antisemitism is being imported into schools, and recommended that those who are responsible for determining course curriculum must boost “education on values and democracy.”
Migration experts and researchers are warning about the detrimental effects mass migration is having on German society as well.
“In terms of immigration, Germany is heading towards a state of clear overload. Successful integration cannot be expected with an influx of this magnitude,” Dr. Stefan Luft, a prominent researcher who teaches at the University of Bremen, told the German press.
“The low or lack of qualifications of the applicants leads to a permanent non-employability on the job market. More ethnic colonies will form, and existing ones will continue to grow,” he added.
CDU interior expert Alexander Throm concurs with Dr. Luft’s assessment, referring to the situation at hand as a “real challenge” that “contains social explosives.”
