As Weißenfels schools cannot adequately support students with little or no knowledge of German, a school is opened exclusively for these students. As the newspaper Bild reports, the state of Saxony-Anhalt spent 327,500 euros on suitable teachers. The district contributed another 165,000 euros for the operation of the school. According to responsible circles, the school should mainly benefit children from refugee families.
“We have to start somewhere,” says district administrator Götz Ulrich (CDU). Firstly, starting in March, 75 boys and girls from families registered with Zeitz will receive classes. The schedule only includes German as a school subject, five hours a day.
Without language skills, full integration is not possible
Among social scientists and linguists, national language acquisition is considered the key to successful integration. Without adequate and rapid language acquisition, foreign communities run the risk of drifting into a parallel society.
Cologne linguist Michael Becker-Mrotzek believes that additional language support for children from refugee families is necessary. At least “two or three hours of language classes a day” must be guaranteed so that children do not lose connection with the class community and become great achievers in society in the long term.