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Education for refugees from Ukraine: »Our teaching capacity is exhausted«

2022-09-17T11:19:01.069Z


Overcrowded classes, lack of space: the increasing number of refugees shows the problems of the German school system. Not every refugee child can take part in the lessons.


Enlarge image

Elementary school students from Ukraine sit in a classroom

Photo: Robert Michael / picture alliance / dpa

If Richard Voss had had his way, he would have accepted children from the Ukraine at his elementary school as early as May or June.

But he failed only when he was looking for a teacher.

And then the slowness of the administration, so the headmaster from Wuppertal reports.

»We started on September 5 because the city was still delaying the allocation of the children.«

Six months after Russia attacked Ukraine, twelve Ukrainian children are now in the welcome class at the Am Nützenberg primary school

– and hundreds more are waiting for a place in North Rhine-Westphalia.

In the week that Voß was finally able to open his class, the federal state issued a decree, subject: "Accelerated admission of newly immigrated pupils to a school."

The problem is pressing: In North Rhine-Westphalia, around 3,800 newly immigrated children and young people still had no school place at the end of August, and a good 2,000 of them came from the Ukraine.

Another 1,700 children and young people are still waiting for a counseling session before they can find a school place, half of them are Ukrainians.

There is also a waiting list in Berlin.

The Berlin Senate Department for Education cannot say how full it is, as there is no complete feedback from the districts - they are responsible for allocating school places.

"All over Berlin it should now be a four-digit number," writes the "Tagesspiegel".

And Hans-Jürgen Kuhn, who has good contacts in the education administration, also assumes that.

School project as »gap filler«

Kuhn was state secretary for the Greens in the Senate administration in Berlin and head of department in the Brandenburg Ministry of Education.

As a retiree, he is committed to helping refugees and has set up a Ukrainian school project for up to 30 children in the Berlin district of Schöneberg, where teachers from Ukraine teach.

more on the subject

  • How German schools take in Ukrainian children: From the war zone to the welcome classBy Silke Fokken

  • Refugees in Germany: Education researchers speak out against welcoming classes for Ukrainian elementary school students

The project is a "gap filler," says Kuhn.

First of all for children from families who hoped to return quickly and therefore did not want to go to a German school.

Meanwhile also for those who were waiting for a school place.

"The families cannot count on a quick solution," says Kuhn.

In other states, the problem is not so big.

When asked by SPIEGEL, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania reports that a school place is currently being sought for 64 children and young people of Ukrainian origin, Saxony-Anhalt writes that they are aware of “individual cases in which schools are reaching the limits of capacity”, but the children are “from other schools allocated in the area".

A tour de force for all federal states

Other federal states such as Baden-Württemberg, Hamburg and Bavaria primarily list how many refugee children from the Ukraine they have already taken in.

One thing is clear: it is a tour de force for all countries.

Almost 180,000 children and young people from the Ukraine came to German schools last week, an increase of around 30,000 compared to the previous school year.

They encounter an education system that is already facing numerous problems due to a shortage of teachers, Corona and dilapidated buildings.

more on the subject

  • Warning from the teachers’ unions at the beginning of the school year: up to 40,000 teachers are missing nationwide

  • Precarious temporary contracts, bad pay: Germany scares its teachers away – and humiliates those who could help By Silke Fokken and Armin Himmelrath

  • Moldy classrooms, broken toilets: school buildings would have to be renovated for 45 billion euros

You hear about schools that are reaching their capacity limits, classes that are overcrowded, rooms that are missing in almost every federal state.

"That's important," says Heinz-Peter Meidinger, chairman of the German Teachers' Association, about the admission of the refugee children.

»We hear from various federal states that teachers are being withdrawn and that groups are being enlarged or funding offers are being cancelled.«

According to Meidinger, the approximately 30,000 children and young people who came after the summer holidays are not new immigrants, but a "catch-up effect": Not all families would have tried to get a place for their children after fleeing in the middle of the school year - or it took a while plain, like at Richard Voss's school in Wuppertal.

gyms to shelters

more on the subject

  • Refugee supply: district council warns of conditions like in the years 2015/2016

  • Concerns about a new refugee crisis: "Soon everything will be occupied here, and then what?" By Katrin Elger, Christine Keck, Anna Reimann and Wolf Wiedmann-Schmidt

There is growing concern in the regions that they will be overwhelmed again.

The President of the German District Association warned on Wednesday that the districts had reached the limits of their capacity in many places when it came to taking in and accommodating Ukrainian refugees.

Gymnasiums are again being converted into accommodation – which the schools then lack.

"We are now faced with the problem of how do we reorganize physical education classes," says Helga Dückers-Janßen, principal of the Catholic St. Hubertus elementary school in Kevelaer, North Rhine-Westphalia.

The local gym will be closed from Monday, and refugees should move in a week later.

"We understand that," says the rector, "but we hope that the measure is limited.

Also in the interests of the affected families.«

At her school, she observed a lack of movement due to the corona pandemic, "we were just on the way to compensate for that," says Dückers-Janßen.

However, she was able to convey the occupancy of the gym to her students well, since the school itself teaches six children from the Ukraine.

The elementary school does not reach its capacity limits as a result.

In contrast to the elementary school run by Richard Voß from Wuppertal, it took the children into the existing classes.

»Our teaching capacity is exhausted«

In North Rhine-Westphalia, schools are free to set up their own study groups for the refugees or to integrate them into regular classes.

Bavaria, on the other hand, provides external "bridging classes" for the secondary schools, in Berlin separate "welcome classes" are provided from the 3rd grade if the children do not speak sufficient German.

Headmaster Voß, who is also involved in the GEW education union, and the former education politician Kuhn from Berlin, who campaigns for the refugees, already see the next problem coming up for the schools: where should the teachers and rooms come from to accommodate the students be admitted to normal classes if the refugees can speak German?

Voss says he cannot promise the families of the twelve children that he will integrate them: "Our teaching capacity is exhausted."

Source: spiegel

All life articles on 2022-09-17

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