Germany's schools in permanent crisis mode - also because of immigration

Germany's education system is being run down more and more. The high school dropout rate is a clear indicator of this. However, the fact that tens of thousands of young people do not even graduate from secondary school every year is just the tip of the iceberg.

The proportion of school leavers who are considered unfit for training because they lack basic knowledge of mathematics and German is even greater.

The fact that local schools only operate in crisis mode is not only due to the learning deficits as a result of the long school closures during the pandemic. The effects of the strong immigration since 2015 are more serious.

Until then, the majority of immigrants were well-trained and easy to integrate EU migrants, but the composition of the student body has changed dramatically since then. In the primary schools in many federal states, every second child now has a migration background. The proportion of uneducated parents is growing.

The most recent comparative tests in schools show that the gap between foreign (1st and 2nd immigrant generation) and German children is widening. But the inevitable lowering of educational standards is also pulling down the good students, as the tests show.

The schools are completely overwhelmed by the rapid change, especially since the shortage of teachers is exacerbating the problem. It is negligent that the current debate about the new immigration law hardly mentions the school misery.

It is true that Germany needs migrant workers because it has too few offspring itself. But more urgent than the easing now planned would be to focus on those who are already here and whose integration into the labor market and the education system urgently needs to be promoted.

Successful immigration countries like Canada and Australia have long recognized the critical role schools play in the long-term benefits of immigration. There, the migrant children even achieve better educational qualifications than the local population.

This is not only due to the clever control of immigration, which is characterized above all by harshness towards those who are not wanted. From day one, the education system grants every foreign child an intensive integration program based on the principle of challenge and encouragement.

In Germany, politicians are instead lowering educational standards. In this way, the benefit of immigration threatens to be reversed.

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