Dead End Schools? Refugees at Segregated Schools in Germany
Study | March 2018
Since 2015, German schools have taken on approximately 130,000 young refugees as students. Many of them, especially in the major cities, attend what are known as "segregated schools", where most of the pupils come from socially disadvantaged homes and have migration backgrounds. To find out more about the learning experience of refugees in the German education system, the SVR Research Unit carried out a study of how students are typically assigned to schools. The study took the form of interviews with teachers at 56 selected secondary schools, all of which could be described as "segregated", in the federal states of Baden-Württemberg, Berlin, Hesse, Hamburg and North Rhine-Westphalia. The teachers, who had trained with the not-for-profit educational organisation Teach First Deutschland, were asked questions relating to the ways in which students are allocated to schools, school-internal segregation and their experiences teaching young refugees. Based on the findings from this study, the SVR Research Unit has now drawn up recommendations for action to promote the educational integration of young refugees. The study was funded by the Stiftung Mercator.
