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School education for refugees as a challenge for union advocacy: Findings from Germany

Thu, March 29, 8:00 to 9:30am, Hilton Reforma, Floor: 2nd Floor, Don Diego 1 Section A

Proposal

Even though migration has always been part of the German experience, and intercultural education and German as a second language have increasingly become obligatory components of teacher training in the last 20 years, the recent influx of refugee children is somehow perceived as a new and exceptional challenge to the German educational system. This contribution discusses the challenges of teacher union advocacy against a background of state measures to ensure school education for refugees in Germany. It draws on a recent study that combined a national research review with exemplary analysis of school and population data and interviews with teachers and other professionals in a German city.

The school situation of refugees varies widely in Germany, due to different school systems in the 16 German Länder. Education authorities in the different states have devoted considerable efforts to defining and delivering the necessary minimum education to refugees. Despite these commitments, this study identified a number of key challenges to educational access and quality for refugees.

For example the right of refugee minors to access school education – as accepted in national and international law – is uncontested in Germany, although it is not always interpreted as a right to attend a general public school. However, the right to schooling is often only granted when schooling is obligatory, which may involve a waiting time of several months. There is no systematic assessment of the competences and learning needs of students before they are assigned to schools.

Furthermore, as a rule, preparatory German classes of varying length precede school integration in regular classes (except for early primary school entrants). Refugee students often have substantial gaps in their school biographies. These gaps in school biographies are aggravated by periods in which they only learn German as the language of instruction. The issue of content teaching through German language instruction has not been systematically addressed in German schools, thus exacerbating these gaps. Also the interactions in regular classes differ widely, depending on state policies, teacher education, and school cultures. Some regular class teachers make great efforts to help all students to participate in their lessons. However, teachers in regular classes are often not well prepared to teach their subject in a group that includes German language learners, and not all schools and teachers consider it their job to address the learning needs of students with different levels of German proficiency.

Staff needs and shortages are two areas where the work of unions is particularly critical. The peculiar and quite complex German system of comprehensive teacher education – involving a master’s degree in two subjects and a state preparatory service – makes it quite difficult for education policy to react flexibly to changes in student numbers and needs. Refugee numbers have increased at a time when staff shortages were already emerging in many German states, particularly at the primary school level. Efforts to introduce ´inclusive education´ and to react to the increasing heterogeneity of students’ social backgrounds have contributed to the gradual and partial replacement of the one-teacher-one-classroom principle with team-teaching. The reactivation of pensioners, job offers for lateral entrants without pedagogic qualifications, and temporary jobs for students and volunteers are all strategies to cope with the current gap between needed and available teachers. In particular, German lessons for new arrivals are being taught largely by temporary staff who do not possess full teacher qualifications, and who often have very limited training in teaching German as a foreign/second language. Furthermore, wage levels and working conditions for teachers vary considerably.

Within this context, union action and advocacy in Germany is confronted with a range of challenges. On the one hand, unions are involved in negotiations about the wage and working conditions of their current members. On the other hand there is a need to organise new and more heterogeneous school staff. Furthermore tensions arise in balancing advocacy for school access to professionals who have received often shorter teacher training in their countries of origin and the members’ interest in keeping up German professional standards. This paper seeks to highlight key challenges for unions in advocating for refugee education, while generating discussion on tensions for union advocacy in other country contexts with refugee migrations.

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