Prolonged school closures in Germany due to its pandemic coronavirus, mainly affected students from immigrant families.
According to AMPE, when a teacher told the mother from Syria Umm Wajic that her 9-year-old son’s performance in German had deteriorated during the six weeks that his school in Berlin remained closed, she was upset, but she was not surprised.
“The child had learned German quickly and we are very proud of him,” said the 25-year-old mother of two. “I knew that without practice he would forget what he had learned, but I could not help him.”
Her son is now facing another school year in a reception class for immigrant children until his German level is high enough for him to be able to join his German classmates in this school in the impoverished Neukeln district of Berlin.
The closure of schools, which in Germany lasted about 30 weeks, Since March last year, compared to just 11 in France, it has further widened the educational gap between immigrants and local students, according to AMPE.
Even before the pandemic, the percentage of immigrant students dropping out of school was 18.2%, almost three times the national average.
Bridging this gap is important, otherwise Germany’s efforts to integrate more than two million asylum seekers over the past seven years, mostly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, risk being derailed, experts say.
Knowledge of the German language is crucial.
“The biggest impact of the integration pandemic (immigrants) is the sudden lack of communication with Germans,” explains Thomas Liebig of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the international organization in which industrialized countries based .
“Most immigrant children do not speak German at home and therefore communication with locals is important.”
More than 50% of students born in Germany to immigrant parents do not speak German at home, the highest rate among the 37 OECD countries, compared with 35% in France.
This number increases to 85% among students not born in Germany.
Immigrant parents, who may not know German, often find it very difficult to help their children with their distance learning lessons and make up for lost time.
They also face more frequent school closures as they often live in poorer areas with higher rates of infection with COVID-19.
The government of the chancellor Angela Merkel and the leaders of 16 German states responsible for local education policy have chosen to close schools during all three waves of the pandemic, while keeping factories open to protect the economy.
“The pandemic has exacerbated the problems of immigrants,” said Mona Nadaf, who is leading a counseling program for immigrant mothers run by the Diakonie Charitable Arm of the Evangelical Church in Noikeln.
“Suddenly they had to deal with more bureaucracy, such as giving diagnostic tests for coronavirus to their child or making an appointment for a vaccination. There is a lot of confusion. “We have had people ask us if it is true that consuming fresh ginger tea protects against the coronavirus and if vaccination causes infertility.”
Nadaf contacted Um Wadjic with Nur Zaged, a German mother of Arab descent and mentor, who advised her on how to stay active and motivate her son and daughter during the lockdowns.
The long-term shortcomings of Germany’s education system, such as the poor digital infrastructure that has hit e-learning, and the limited lifespan of teaching, which has forced parents to take responsibility for their children’s study, increased problems for immigrant parents.
A lost generation of students
Only 45% of the 40,000 schools in Germany had high-speed internet before the pandemic, according to the teachers’ union, and school classes end at 1.30pm, compared with at least 3.30pm in France.
Schools in the poorest neighborhoods have more shortages of digital infrastructure and parents do not have the money to buy a laptop or study after school.
Between 2000 and 2013, Germany had managed to halve the percentage of immigrant students leaving school, to around 10%, by boosting German language assistance in kindergartens and schools.
But the number of students dropping out of school has increased in recent years, as more students from countries with lower educational levels, such as Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, joined German school classes.
The teachers’ union says 20% of the 10.9 million students in Germany need extra tuition to successfully complete this school year, and that the number of students leaving school is expected to double to more than 100,000.
“The educational gap among immigrant students and locals will expand. “We will need massive investment in post-pandemic education, including targeted teaching, to avoid a lost generation of students,” said Axel Ploineke, a professor at the Cologne Institute for Economic Research.
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