Foreign Students Perform More Poorly
Similar to what was found in international comparative studies (unfortunately, the transition study by the Max Planck Institute for Human Development was not yet included), foreign schoolchildren as a whole perform more poorly: 19.2% of boys leave the Hauptschule without a diploma; girls pass the Abitur more often (19% compared to 16% of boys). Moroccans are only half as likely as German youths to attain the entrance qualification for a technical college or a university, and Turkish and Italian youths are even less likely to do so. Lebanese, Albanians, and Serbs are also among the problem cases, whereas Russians and Asians are not. In its chapter on education, which was the subject of very controversial discussions, the Expert Council thus called for the school system to become more permeable; at the same time, it has distanced itself, at least half-heartedly, from hasty pleas for longer periods of uniform education.
The so-called integration paradox in education is instructive. Although German parents have had positive experiences with ethnic diversity in educational institutions, their willingness to send their children to schools with high quotients of immigrants declines as their level of education rises. Evidently, they do not trust that schools can deal with diversity in a productive manner.
Plea for a “Proactive” Immigration Policy
In the labor market, there is a “quantitative and a qualitative migration problem.” For that reason, according to the report, Germany must pursue, alongside an education- and skills-offensive on the domestic level, a “proactive” immigration policy, and it must become more attractive to immigrants, especially skilled ones. It is still the case that more skilled foreigners are leaving than particularly skilled ones are arriving. With advanced formal qualifications, foreigners in Germany can find jobs without a problem – it is only Turks that smaller companies still seem reluctant to hire.
It is sobering that 20-30% of youths who return to school [after dropping out] to pursue diplomas in the so-called transition system do not move on to vocational training within three years. Twenty-nine percent of foreign youths don’t even make it into the transition system at all, but rather drop out of the vocational training system completely. According to the Expert Council, the transition system, in its present form, should either be abolished or completely restructured. It recommends low-threshold options for those who leave school without a Hauptschule diploma [i.e., without completing ninth grade].
For the integration barometer, the same questions were put to immigrants and Germans – to that end, a representative sample of 5,600 people were interviewed in the traditional immigration regions, the Rhine-Ruhr area, Stuttgart, and the Rhine-Main area, where those surveyed included Turks, ethnic German remigrants [Aussiedler], foreigners from non-EU countries, and Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans. As a relatively “new” immigration area, Berlin is unfortunately missing from the survey, but it will be included in the next integration barometer in two years.
In Berlin, specific problems have resulted from the disappearance of industrial jobs, the city’s high dependence on transfer payments, and the high level of immigration by Turks and refugees from Arab states. Moreover, unemployment among immigrants is twice as high in Berlin as in other regions (30%). But, overall, the risk that foreigners will become unemployed is three times higher in the Netherlands than in Germany.
Source: Heike Schmoll, “Im Einwanderungsland angekommen” [“Acknowledgment of the Immigration Nation”], FAZ.NET Feuilleton, May 20, 2010.
Translation: Thomas Dunlap
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