How happy and successful a child is at school depends on many factors. One is: origin. Numerous studies have shown that students with at least one parent who comes from abroad tend to still perform worse than children without such a migration background.
Much has already improved in this area in recent years. But nationwide, education researchers, educators and politicians continue to ponder what else can be done so that children with foreign roots can achieve better performance in German schools.
Experts from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have recently suggested that children should be supported early in their native language, teachers trained on a cross-cultural basis, and parents involved in school life. Also important are anti-bullying programs and good extra-curricular offers.
Now, researchers from the Ifo Institute in Munich are waiting with another insight: German citizenship can also be helpful from birth. This is shown by a study published on Thursday in the Journal of Labor Economics.
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The basis for the study was a reform of the citizenship law, which enforced the red-green federal government in the nineties. From 1 January 2000, children of foreign parents were given German citizenship at birth if one parent had lived in Germany for at least eight years and had a permanent right of residence.
Two out of ten children born in 1999 were granted German citizenship at birth, according to the study. Among children who were born in the following year, it was well seven out of ten.
The researchers therefore compared children from the same grade level who were born before and after this deadline - that is, statistically differ mainly in whether they have the German nationality or not. Data from the school entrance examinations and school registry data of Schleswig-Holstein were evaluated.
The study found that children born after the reform:
- visited a kindergarten more often.
- already spoke German better before enrollment and continued in their socio-emotional development.
- ... were enrolled earlier and had to repeat a grade less often in elementary school.
- rather got a recommendation for high school.
"The automatic acquisition of German citizenship had many positive effects on the educational integration of the affected children and could help to narrow the gap between children with and without a migration background," says Helmut Rainer, labor market expert at the Ifo Institute, one of the three study authors ,
Why is that? The researchers suspect that the reform has motivated parents in particular to take care of their children's school success. After all, those with German citizenship would also have a better chance of really achieving something in the long term on the labor market.
"The award of citizenship costs nothing, except a few bureaucratic gestures and perhaps the tears of some politicians," said study author Christina Felfe the "Süddeutsche Zeitung".
A tough education policy wrestling is likely to give it on this topic, however, probably. The dispute was recently boiled up when CDU politician Carsten Linnemann had demanded that children only be admitted to primary school if they speak enough German. Two years ago Linnemann said in an interview: "German citizenship is a value in itself and should be at the end of integration and not at the beginning."