One of the little things that you began to note around mid-2015 with the migration and immigration chaos....was that children and school topics wasn't being discussed much with the German news crowd.
On rare occasions, some teachers would simply note....these incoming kids simply weren't at the same level. There were typically two explanations which rarely got public attention: schools in other countries are geared to a different level, and the war-period. The war-period angle fit for kids from Iraq and Syria....kids who were not in school for a year or two....so you'd have a 14-year old, who at best was at the 12-year old level because he'd missed school on the war account.
This comes up this week through a Tagesspiegel article talking on a Berlin education project.
The school system in Berlin decided that radical things had to occur with the immigrant kids in the system. In this neighborhood....they've selected 220 immigrant kids and loaded them into one building (it was an unused school building), and put a huge amount of emphasis not just on the German language but improving their marginal educational background. These become specialized lesson plans....geared to be intensive and trying to bring kids up a notch in a limited amount of time. This also means that there are no German kids around them...it's all migrant or immigrant kids.
The good intent of the school system? It's being attacked by the left-wing folks and the Green Party of Berlin.
They say all of the kids need to be in a regular German school and getting 'integrated'. That's the only way resolve the path ahead for these kids....in their mind.
It is an odd problem. If you added up the immigrants, migrants, and refugees fr om 2012 to today....it's roughly 1.7-million (more or less). The bulk of this group are adult....mostly because of the high numbers of North Africans that came (young men in search of jobs). There's not lots of statistics on 'kids' out of this 1.7-million.....but I'd take a guess that around 150,000 fit into the character of being under the age of 18.
Having seen the German educational system up close....I would be considerate in saying that the German educational system is geared to provide basic instruction and if you didn't get it or got behind....they aren't there to bring a kid up to the point of making it. The parent was then stuck hiring tutors or putting the kid through educational-activities after school (meaning out of your own pocket). Most German parents are familiar with this and know that the system isn't capable of handling marginal students or those who are behind.
In this formula for success....you can have one of two things. You can have integrated kids who have a marginal education and will become your future burger-flippers....or you can have non-integrated kids who have an eventual trade-skill or possibly a university degree. But you can't have both.
On the list of 100 major screw-ups by the government in understanding what they implemented....this education problem is one of those screw-ups. Toss in the fact that there are probably over forty different languages that you have to work with, and you could be that one odd school which ended up with six Pakistani kids who speak only Sindhi....which is different from the primary language of Pakistan (Punjabi). Odds of finding some tutor to be in the mix of this school's program....speaking Sindhi? Watch the German administrator start laughing because it'd be easier to spend an entire year working strictly on German itself.
How this story will end? My humble guess is that after a year....most of the 220 migrant/immigrant kids will progress to a regular German school...with some minor tutoring on the side....and progress onto integration. It may take three years but I think across Germany....everyone will admit that this is probably the only way to handle the progression of immigrant kids into Germany. It will cost more, and provoke more outrage among the social-crowd....but you need to give these kids more of a chance at life than being a burger-flipper.
But this will bring up this one odd piece of the whole immigration policy. Education around the globe simply isn't equal. Just opening the door and thinking that 100,000 or 500,000 migrants or immigrants walking in....will be future workers in Germany....is very naive. Few will meet the craft or educational requirements, and all of this will relate to a financial number (meaning tax revenue for years will have to be dedicated toward this problem). As long as your economy is booming along....no problem. The day that arrives and you have a sour economy....lots of questions will arise over the logic of this whole program and how you can afford to continue in this method.
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