More than 60,000 young people will not have completed school in 2024. The Arche founder warns of an educational catastrophe and calls for radical reforms.
Frankfurt – If first graders can’t even hold a pen properly, or if they can’t go to the toilet alone, something is wrong. If, like last school year, over 62,000 young people leave school without a school qualification and end up on citizens’ allowance, that would be “a catastrophe,” says Bernd Siggelkow Frankfurter Rundschau by Ippen.Media. He calls for compulsory training. “Otherwise these young people will slip onto the wrong track. It makes sense: if I have time but no money, then it’s much easier for me to become a criminal.”
The founder of the Christian children’s aid organization “Die Arche” sees what goes wrong in German schools every day. “It’s disastrous,” he says. “In my opinion, our education system is currently the most pressing problem we have.” This can be seen in the 11,000 children and young people that the Arche now looks after. “This year we need 25 million euros from more and more children and young people. That’s significantly more than in previous years,” says Siggelkow. Many of the children have “behavioral problems and extremely creative behavior.” Some need 1:1 care, which is why the Arche has to hire more staff. Next year he expects costs of 29 million euros.
Arche founder warns of “downward spiral” in German schools
The problem is exacerbated by the distribution of children. “As a society, we create our own hotspot schools on the outskirts of the city,” says Siggelkow, referring to apartment blocks mostly outside the city center for low-income earners and refugees, whose children all attend the same school. In addition, children with refugee experience often do not get a daycare place because there are too few places and their parents are at home anyway. “These children don’t speak a word of German when they come to school.”
The result: German parents who could afford it would no longer send their children there. “This is a downward spiral,” warns the Arche founder Frankfurter Rundschau. More and more parents are choosing private schools for their children when the majority of children have a migrant background. Even if that doesn’t necessarily improve his educational opportunities.
“Solidarity alone is not enough”: What the Arche founder is “afraid of”
“We have to distribute children with poor German skills or refugee experiences better so that every school class has an equal proportion of these children.” This requires concepts with buses, smaller classes and multi-professional teams of teachers, social educators, educators and special educators. “Solidarity alone is not enough. We have to take intensive care.” In the Ark you try this and are successful – but it costs more and more “money, time and commitment”.
This commitment hardly exists anymore: especially in well-off, left-wing districts, “there is a lot of talk about solidarity and at the same time everything is being done to ensure that the refugees are not accommodated in an apartment block there.” Instead, they are deported to the outskirts of the city,” says Siggelkow Frankfurter Rundschau. This increases the division in society and drives people into extreme political camps. “That’s what I’m afraid of. Of a society in which the neglected families stay all to themselves and at the bottom.” (Sources: own research, dpa)
