Education International Research
Germany. Fifteen to 20 hours of questionable-quality education are provided without German-language lessons – mostly “arts and crafts”, according to staff (Klaus and Millies, 2017, p.16). Since March 2017, such “special reception and return centres” have been instituted for persons whose prospect of staying in Germany are low. These centres may have a high turnover of people, including children and youth who had already attended a regular school. The siblings, Naime (20), Lejhana (18) and Jeton (16), came in Autumn 2014 from Albania to Germany. For a year, they lived with their parents in one room in a municipal shelter in a small Bavarian city. The parents engaged in work for persons on welfare (1-Euro-jobs), the brother went to school, the sisters took part in an advanced course of German as a second language. After internships, the siblings were offered vocational education in the dual system by a dental technician and technician for hearing devices, the brother as an apprentice in construction. Nineteen months after entry, the family had to move to the special reception and return centre. (Lewek and Naber, 2017, p.28)
3.1.3. Waiting times until regular school entry in municipal shelters and flats Access to education for those living in municipal shelters may also involve delay – due to staff shortages in schools or to bottlenecks in administrative procedures around areas such as residence registration, health checks, or age determination of unaccompanied youth. In fact, no school attendance is recorded for five per cent of a sample six-12-year-old age group of refugee children (Gambaro et al., 2017, P.384–385).24 In addition, new arrivals who have not yet lodged a formal asylum application are not covered, leading to an underestimation of the number of children without access to education. In Bremen, 3.5 per cent of German language learners of school age are awaiting school placement (own calculation based on Bremische Bürgerschaft, 2017). Waiting times for school places were particularly long in the peak of immigration in 2015, as the education administration was not able to start new classes due to a lack of staff. A family came from Kosovo with four children in 2015. At the time of the interview with a Master’s student in 2017, all the children were in school. While the three younger children were quickly assigned to schools, the daughter who was 17 in the year of arrival was told to wait due to lack of school places. The mother felt guilty for not securing a school place for her daughter, and the daughter who had attended a Gymnasium in Kosovo was frustrated. After six months of waiting, a retired teacher who gave voluntary lessons in the shelter intervened on her behalf and helped to get her into an Oberschule. “It was the happiest day for our daughter, and for us as well!” (Masters student, University of Bremen, interview, 2017) 24 The sample is taken from a representative survey of adult asylum seekers who give information about the school situation of their children (Gambaro et al., 2017, p.379).
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