A quarter of a million students could flee from Ukraine to Germany. The schools are already reaching their capacity limits. Now demands are being made to teach the students according to the Ukrainian educational system. But that would stand in the way of successful integration.
Integration instead of isolation: Ukrainian school children are admitted to welcome classes in Berlin.
250,000 school-age children could flee from the Ukraine to Germany. This estimate by the German Teachers’ Association has been circulating in the German media for a few days, and it is just one indication of the enormous challenges schools will face in the coming years. According to the Conference of Ministers of Education, more than 20,000 refugee children and young people have already been admitted to general and vocational schools in Germany.
The German Teachers’ Association expects that at least 15,000 additional teachers will be needed, plus thousands of kindergarten teachers. This not only costs money – the association expects an amount in the double-digit billions – but also requires enormous capacities and planning skills at almost all levels of the school infrastructure, for which education policy, especially in Berlin, where most refugees from Ukraine are currently arriving nationwide, tends to be is not known.
The German capital has been struggling with an acute shortage of teachers for years. In other federal states, too, there is a lack of students who want to become teachers. The Education and Training Association recently published new calculations, according to which around 158,000 teachers could be missing in Germany by 2035. This does not include the additional needs of the Ukrainian refugees.
Education researchers against welcome classes
So where are all the teachers supposed to come from? Petra Stanat knows how difficult the situation is. She is a professor at the Institute for Quality Development in Education at the Humboldt University in Berlin and a member of the Standing Scientific Commission (SWK) of the Conference of Ministers of Education. You have to fall back on well-known means of bridging the teacher shortage, she says in an interview. This included the involvement of students, retired teachers and career changers – but also the involvement of Ukrainian teachers who had fled to Germany. However, those who only know the Berlin school landscape from the inside, which is often poorly equipped in terms of space, may have doubts that this is sufficient.
But that is by no means the only problem. The decisive question is how the integration of families who have fled Ukraine can succeed in the medium and long term. Because no matter how the war situation in Ukraine develops, many people will probably not be able to return to their homeland in the foreseeable future. The country is destroyed.
The demand from the recently published report therefore also seems unrealistic Statement of the SWK on “support for refugee children and young people from Ukraine through rapid integration in day-care centers and schools”. Accordingly, schools should offer native language lessons for Ukrainian students to enable them to return to the Ukrainian education system. Of course, there would also be bonds here, admits Stabat. At the same time, however, prospects of return should be kept open.
The educational researchers at the SWK are against accommodating Ukrainian refugees in welcome classes. Rather, the pupils should go straight to mainstream school in order to speed up the process of integration. In addition, they should receive German lessons.
Teaching in the language of origin: Ukrainian students should continue to receive educational opportunities from their home country.
Can this work? Don’t the pupils first have to learn the German language separately before they can follow the regular lessons at German schools? Even now, there is often the problem of excessive heterogeneity in the performance and abilities of the students in schools. The pandemic has once again exacerbated these differences and social inequality. A new education study by the Technical University of Dortmund has shown that since the outbreak of the pandemic, primary school students have fallen back by half a year in reading skills alone. If they now have to integrate classmates who do not speak their mother tongue and are used to a different school system, the teachers will hardly be able to maintain the usual teaching standards.
Criticism of “Russian imperialism” in the curricula
Nevertheless, the SWK considers an immediate inclusion in regular classes appropriate. The aim is to enable the children to have a normal day at school as quickly as possible and to promote exchange with other students, explains Stanat. The educational researcher sees no problem with language barriers in the subjects of music, sport or art. This is also possible in English lessons, which the students also had in the Ukraine. Stanat is also convinced that small children in particular learn very quickly. “Teaching must lead to integration, not isolation,” she says.
But the integration can hardly be realized quite so smoothly. On the Ukrainian side, there are very specific ideas about what schooling for Ukrainian refugees should look like.
The Ukrainian Consul General Irina Tibinka recently drew attention to herself with demands that are likely to cause headaches for the German school authorities. In a letter to the Conference of Ministers of Education, she demands that the refugee students should be taught according to the Ukrainian education system. The national identity of the children must be preserved. From Tibinka’s point of view, this is not compatible with the curricula at German schools. She accuses the schools of manipulative historiography. “Russian imperialism” dominates the curricula.
Better conditions than 2015
Stanat understands that there is a desire on the Ukrainian side to maintain their own educational premises. At the same time, she emphasizes: “We cannot build a parallel system.” It is important to cooperate with the Ukrainian Ministry of Education without giving up your own school system. This also includes the recognition of examination achievements.
Compared to 2015, when many refugees came to Germany from Arab countries, the situation is sometimes a bit easier. The overall level of education in Ukraine is higher, and many Ukrainian teachers who can now support German schools have fled.
The students from Ukraine have a head start due to the pandemic. According to reports, the forced online lessons are said to have been very successful there; Teachers and students benefited from this even now. Where possible, classes in Ukrainian will continue digitally. For now, that’s a small glimmer of hope. In the long term, however, schools will need much more support to successfully integrate Ukrainian students while maintaining the quality of education.