Almost 20,000 Ukrainian children and young people have been accommodated and taught by Hesse's schools since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression. In the opinion of Minister of Education Alexander Lorz (CDU), the schools have thus achieved "outstanding and unique". This was announced by the Minister on Tuesday in Bad Schwalbach, when he got a picture of the situation at the Nikolaus-August-Otto-Schule (NAOS), drew an interim balance and spoke of an unprecedented challenge. While Lorz was impressed by the performance of the comprehensive school, about 120 students demonstrated and complained about the lack of digitization and a lack of teachers.
It is an unusual picture: Hesse's Minister of Education and Cultural Affairs sits at a table with four refugee children, and the five write down a collection of ideas on how active and positive coexistence in society can work. The four students quickly lose their shyness and work very loosely with the minister. Lorz is obviously having fun. He contributes voluntary work in associations and citizens' initiatives as an idea. "I think it's just great to see how eager young people are to learn," he said, adding: "It makes me hopeful that what we are doing will be successful and give young people a place in our society."
300 Ukrainian teachers hired
"We make sure that Ukrainian children and young people are not deprived of educational opportunities," he had previously said, and school principal Kirsten Klug added that NAOS has accepted 41 Ukrainian students into its intensive classes since the beginning of the war. In these classes, the children first learn the German language before switching to regular lessons. At the Bad Schwalbach school, 57 students from nine nations are currently studying German. In Hesse, never before have so many children and young people from the refugee areas attended school. According to the Ministry of Culture, 34,000 students, of whom currently around 16,000 come from Ukraine, are in intensive classes. More than 3000,350 Ukrainians have already left the Hessian schools, partly because their families have moved away. About <> of them have already moved on to regular classes.
"It's tugging at us from all sides," Lorz outlined the situation, pointing out that around 300 Ukrainian teachers have been hired to handle the flood of new students. There are currently almost 2000 intensive classes throughout Hesse – more than 900 have been set up in the past twelve months alone. Although around 2022 teaching positions were increased between February and December 750 and there are now more than 3000,<> positions for the school integration of refugees, the challenges remain great, according to Lorz. Since the Ukrainian students are all quite young, the Ministry of Education assumes that most of them will graduate from school in Germany. "They are really fit, which is a real enrichment for the job market," was heard on the sidelines of the event.
Students' concerns
Lorz did not go to the education summit organized by Federal Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (FDP). "Afterwards I have our big Alliance for Training talks with the Minister of Economic Affairs, which we have been planning for months," he explained his rejection and added: "The date had not been agreed beforehand."
Around 120 students waited in vain for the minister at the school entrance, because Lorz took another route. They carried placards with inscriptions such as "We notice the shortage of teachers", "Guthe Schule geet anderst" and "Where has our musical focus gone?" "In the canteen, five classes were recently supervised by a teacher from the first to the sixth hour," one student described the effects of the teacher shortage, another added: "Our school portal is hardly used, and digitization is not progressing either." Following the event, Lorz faced the students and, according to a ministry spokesman, spoke to them for almost an hour.