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Refugee families with school children (in Berlin)
Photo:
IMAGO/Jochen Eckel
Thousands of additional teachers are needed to integrate Ukrainian refugee children into the German school system.
Karin Prien, the President of the Conference of Ministers of Education (KMK), assumes this.
Because of the war in Ukraine, Germany has to prepare for up to 400,000 additional schoolchildren, the Schleswig-Holstein Minister of Education told the editorial network Germany.
"We calculate that you need about 60 teachers for every 1,000 students," said Prien.
"So we would need 24,000 teachers for 400,000 children and young people from the Ukraine."
The additional teachers required are likely to exacerbate the existing shortage of teachers.
So far, the KMK assumes that there will be a shortage of almost 24,000 teachers by 2035.
According to calculations by the Essen-based education researcher Klaus Klemm, however, the number is considerably higher: On behalf of the Education and Training Association (VBE), he calculated a need for over 127,000 teachers by 2035 - over 100,000 more than the Conference of Ministers of Education.
German as the language of education
The KMK calculations are "highly unrealistic," states Klemm.
In addition, the ministers would not take into account political reforms that have already been decided: the right to a full-time place, inclusion and support for children in challenging social situations would drive the need even higher.
Klemm even assumes that there will be a shortage of almost 160,000 teachers by 2035.
more on the subject
UNICEF report: Almost two-thirds of all Ukrainian children are displaced
Refugees from the Ukraine: Welcome to Solingen! Miriam Olbrisch reports from Solingen
Experts and politicians agree that long-term perspectives in Germany must be developed quickly for the refugees.
"The brutality of this war, the destruction and the unforeseeable duration suggest that many people will probably stay with us longer," said Labor Minister Hubertus Heil of the dpa news agency.
»We have to be prepared for that.« So far, around 340,000 refugees from the Ukraine have been officially identified in Germany.
Many of the people actually wanted to return to their homeland as quickly as possible.
"For example, many Ukrainian children who are now with us in Germany are still homeschooled from their homeland - that alone shows the will to return," said the SPD politician.
But the war will not allow many people to return safely in the foreseeable future.
It is therefore important that the children and young people from Ukraine learn “German as an educational language”, said CDU education politician Prien.
»Avoid mistakes of the past«
"For children who are still here at the beginning of the next school year, it could be several years," emphasized the KMK President.
»If we want to avoid mistakes of the past, we have to approach them from the start as if they were here longer.
We owe it to the Ukrainian children.«
Several federal states have therefore started to hire Ukrainian teachers.
The first three teachers signed their employment contracts in Saxony-Anhalt on Wednesday.
They should initially teach children and young people in special arrival classes.
And in Schleswig-Holstein, the first Ukrainian teacher even started her job at the end of March: she is now part of the teaching staff at the Harksheide community school in Norderstedt.
him/dpa/AFP
