German School System Overwhelmed by Migrants, Warns President of German Teachers’ Association

The German education system is facing a serious crisis as increasingly more and more students are speaking little or no German at all, warns Stefan Düll, the president of the German Teachers’ Association.

“Due to immigration in 2015, the war in Ukraine and other immigration, new people are constantly coming into the system, but the system is slow to keep up because it is moving too fast,” said Dülli, who told new agency DTS that the school system was overloaded due to excessive immigration.

The president says that a high proportion of these children speak little or no German, which is putting an enormous burden on teachers.

“After all, they don’t speak Farsi or Ukrainian. How are they supposed to teach them?” he asked.

He said that students are also less motivated. “The higher the percentage of immigrants, the more difficult it is to motivate the class,” stated Düll. In his opinion, the high number of immigrants could also lead to “the group of illiterates becoming larger.” As Remix News reported last year, 25 percent of 4th graders cannot read in Germany.

“In the end, the lack of reading skills not only endangers the social participation of many people but also Germany as a whole as a business location,” said Susanne Lin-Klitzing, who serves as the chairwoman of the German Association of Philologists.

Remix News has reported on the crisis in German school systems before, along with other Western nations like France, due to mass immigration. Language is not the only issue, as multiculturalism has also led to conflicts in classrooms, social divisions, and even violence against teachers.

“Twenty-three different nations meet in the schoolyard, some of whom cannot understand each other at all and who sometimes come from hostile regions, such as Russia and Ukraine. We need a lot of parent-teacher talks, which mostly take place with interpreters. And that brings us to one of the reasons why the teaching profession has become less and less attractive: The psychological stress is enormous and it has increased significantly,” said principal Norma Grube during an interview with Welt last year.

While Grube is only one principal, the stress facing teachers and principals is a phenomenon seen across the country, and top teaching officials, such as Düll, are now joining the conversation as well.

Düll’s criticisms of mass immigration come after the National Education Report was presented on Monday, which showed many children do not meet even the minimum education requirements already in elementary school.

In Berlin, 40 percent of students do not speak German as their native language, and in cities like Hamburg, the majority of students have a migrant background. Overall, an astounding 38 percent of all children in elementary schools in Germany have migrant backgrounds.

Following the results of the EU elections, which saw the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party become the second-largest party in the nation, to explain their popularity, Mayor of Tübingen Boris Palmer said young people are dealing with the consequences of mass immigration, which is making them turn to right-wing parties.

“They experience what irregular migration means on a daily basis,” Palmer, who formerly served with the Greens but has since become independent, wrote on Facebook.

“Above all, the young men who have arrived alone are changing the living environment of young people. In the park, in the club, on the street, on the bus, at the train station, in the schoolyard,” he added.

His points are reflected in the data made available from the education system. Teachers in Berlin, for instance, required police intervention in the school system 5 times a day in 2023, with police interventions rising dramatically.