Minister of Education Michael Piazolo (FW) does not expect compulsory schooling for Ukrainian children and young people to be enforced in the current school year. As far as the current three-month period is concerned, the focus here is “really very much on the next school year,” said the Free Voter politician on Tuesday after a cabinet meeting in Munich. “If someone comes to us now, they will be accepted.”
According to Piazolo, 500 additional pupils from the Ukraine are currently coming to the Bavarian schools every day, in total this has been more than 22,000 since the beginning of March. “In the last almost two months, the number of pupils who attend arrived in our schools,” he said. “We assume that there will be significantly more.” Furthermore, the distribution is very different, there are many more Ukrainians in urban centers than in rural areas.
Around half of the students who are now at the schools are in the pedagogical welcome groups, but a little over 30 percent are already in the regular classes. In order to accommodate as many students as possible in the regular classes, the focus is now on teaching German. In addition, there should be many advisory services about the types of school and degrees. “We made five million euros available by the end of the school year to provide appropriate financial support,” said Piazolo. Since it is unclear how long the war will last, the financing must also take this into account.
According to Head of State Florian Herrmann (CSU), 144,213 Ukrainians in Bavaria have now been registered by the police (as of Monday). This means that more than 35 percent of the war refugees registered nationwide (402,651) were staying in Bavaria. Herrmann emphasized that there is still a dynamic flow of refugees, with 700 to 1,000 people arriving in Bavaria every day. Nevertheless, the accommodation is not a problem: 40,451 are currently in state accommodation, there are still around 27,800 places available.