Problems
Overcrowding
- The Standing Conference predicts that there will be 325,000 extra students across Germany in the next year alone.
- Since a majority of refugees live outside camps, the children are forced to enroll in an already overcrowded public school or participate in informal community classes.
- Local schools do not have the resources available to include the needs of the large amount of refugee children and often are forced to turn refugees away from schools, only furthering the problem.
- Refugees also have different learning needs that are not necessarily being accounted for, including unfamiliar language, catch-up programs and relevant curriculum.
- The large influx of refugees has caused classroom sizes to increase which leads to less individual attention and adaptations for students.
Language Barrier
- Unfamiliar language is a critical problem which is preventing the refugee's access to an education.
- There is still a lack of educators who have the capability to teach German as a second language. The unknown amount of refugees coming to Germany adds to this challenge.
- Teachers do not have the time to try to get passed the language barrier when they are so focused on fulfilling the normal curriculum.
- Separate classes are making it harder for refugees to integrate into German society as they are not being exposed to the language and culture.
Lack of Funding
- There currently is not enough funding for Germany's educational budget to provide for new programs.
- It has been estimated that it would cost 3.3 billion Euros to redesign a German education plan to help the crisis.
- International partners need to support host governments’ efforts to expand and improve learning spaces, recruit additional teachers, and decrease the costs of getting children into the classroom.
- Funding needs to be provided to hire qualified teachers to teach and integrate refugee students into German society.
- Funding needs to be made available to provide for children with disabilities and vocational training for older students. Schools are struggling with the concept of inclusion classes of children with disabilities.
Lack of trained teachers
- There are not enough trained teachers available to deal with the large number of refugees.
- Teachers don’t necessarily have the ability or patience to deal with students who cannot speak German. They don’t have the time needed to try and get passed the language barrier when they are so focused on fulfilling their normal curriculum.
- There is a high need for teachers who have the capability of addressing the inevitable psychological issues that these students are dealing with as a result of fleeing their terror-ridden home country. Students sit in the classroom and deal with high levels of psychological trauma.
- More teachers are needed to deal with refugees with disabilities.
- Schools lack the resources available to deal with situations like this, and this is something that needs to be addressed by the German education commission.