Hundreds of thousands of people who are required to take part in integration courses are leaving early, new figures from the federal government show. The problems are homemade, says a language expert.
Berlin – The question of how people who have fled to Germany can best be integrated divides opinion. Almost all politicians agree that young refugees in Germany must be put into work more quickly. To do this, they need a completed integration and language course. But the number of people leaving the course is extremely high, as the latest figures from the federal government show. The rigid system of integration courses harms both refugees and the German labor market, says linguistics professor Christoph Schroeder.
High dropout rate from integration and language courses
“An integration course must be evaluated differently than the Italian course at the VHS,” says Schroeder, whose research at the University of Potsdam focuses on learning new languages in the context of refugee and migration movements. “People with very different backgrounds are thrown together there, and quite a few of them have no experience with forms of school learning.”
In fact, when you look at the numbers, a discrepancy becomes clear: According to the federal government, almost 275,000 people took part in a language course in 2023, which is part of the integration course for people without knowledge of German. About 81,000 of the people dropped out of courses that same year, most of them because of inactivity. The government does not provide any more detailed reasons. This is not a new development; it has been clear for years that the dropout rate from language and integration courses is high.
Integration courses: more than half leave
The situation is even more dramatic when it comes to integration courses, in which more people usually take part than language courses. According to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), just over 300,000 people took part in an integration course in the first half of 2023. With 176,000 people leaving the course in the same period, the rate is over 50 percent. Most of them were Ukrainians, many of whom had already reached the required B1 language level ahead of time. However, over 100,000 of the resignations were due to inactivity or because the legal goal of the integration course was not achieved.
Integration courses consist of a language course and an orientation course; in individual cases there is also a literacy class, for which final tests are required. A completed course is a prerequisite for refugees entitled to protection in order to be able to fully participate in the German labor market. Recently there has been repeated criticism of the integration courses. CDU General Secretary Carsten Linnemann recently called for mandatory participation for refugees, more teaching of values and new forms of examinations. In fact, most people are already obliged to take part in integration courses.
Germany is putting a “straitjacket” on itself
For Schroeder from the University of Potsdam, the courses should not be evaluated based on the number of people leaving, as there can be very different reasons for this. “The heterogeneity of the course participants is a big challenge,” says Schroeder, who points out that many of the people have no experience with the forms of school learning that are common here. In addition, according to the argument, the family situation, health condition and the open question of a job are factors of insecurity for refugees.
In addition, according to Schroeder, the rigid form of the courses is a problem. “The structures and bureaucracy behind the language courses are subject to a thoroughness that sometimes goes overboard.” Schroeder speaks of the goal of language level B1 (independent use of the language). “The expectation that we as a society have of the courses, namely that people come out with a B1 certificate at the end, is, in my opinion, problematic,” says the scientist and adds: “With the legal requirement of the B1 language level, we have a straitjacket on ourselves and thus imposed problems on ourselves.”
Difficult access to the labor market
Schroeder advocates more flexibility. For example, companies should be able to easily employ people without a B1 level and create opportunities for them to acquire the necessary German skills in their careers. Faced with the growing challenge of the shortage of skilled workers, an increasing number of companies and associations are also making this demand. “More practical models and offers would be helpful and worth considering,” says Schroeder. Because, as Schroeder argues, “I think it’s a mistake to base the entry into integration and its success solely on the language.”