Refugee children: wanted school place | tagesschau.de

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children and young people came to Germany as a result of the war. Finding school places for them is difficult – a burden for refugees and the municipalities.

“The children are bored at school, especially in math classes,” says Natalia. In March she fled to Düsseldorf with her eleven-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son. In the Ukraine, according to their mother, the two were among the best in their class, in Germany they go to secondary school.

All her efforts to find places at secondary schools or high schools have so far failed, Natalia says. You have contacted all the schools in the area, there is no space anywhere. The school authority has so far left her request unanswered, according to the Ukrainian.

Another mother from the Ukraine reports that her six-year-old son was only offered a school in Cologne, for which he would have had to change trains three times to get to school. As an emergency solution, she organized a place at a Russian-speaking private school, according to her mother. The family now pays school fees of 140 euros per month, although they have little money at their disposal. She would like a “normal school” for her son, says the mother.

Rooms and teaching staff are scarce

The plight of the refugee families is offset by scarce resources in the municipalities. In North Rhine-Westphalia alone, almost 4,400 teaching positions were vacant in the summer, and there is also a lack of classroom space. According to the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of Education, school places had been found for around 35,000 people by the end of August. Up until then, more than 2,000 Ukrainian children and young people in North Rhine-Westphalia had not had a place at school.

In addition, there is a legal peculiarity in dealing with refugees from Ukraine. Unlike asylum seekers, in many cases they are free to choose their place of residence. This creates regional inequalities. Refugees do not always end up where school places are available. In some areas, the demand for school places is much higher than elsewhere, and large cities are particularly popular and in demand.

Rural communities also have their limits

The situation in rural Lindlar is a little less tense. The municipality, around 30 kilometers from Cologne, has so far been able to cope well with the admission of Ukrainian schoolchildren, says Mayor Georg Ludwig.

According to the mayor, children of elementary school age attend the “nearest elementary school to where they live.” In the meantime, however, the schools here are also reaching the limits of admission in individual years, says Mayor Ludwig.

Lack of capacity at high schools

Natalia, the mother of the two children who go to secondary school in Düsseldorf, has not yet given up hope. She continues to look for high school places for her children. A spokeswoman for the district government responsible for school issues in Düsseldorf shared on request tagesschau.de with the fact that “due to capacity reasons it is not possible to meet all requests for initial support at a grammar school”.

However, the “initial support” of refugees from the Ukraine takes place regardless of the type of school, with the focus on language acquisition: “It is usually after two years that the teachers who taught in the initial support advise and decide which type of school the pupil should attend or the student can successfully continue his or her school career,” said the spokeswoman for the district government. A long wait for parents and children.

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