Schools at capacity, No Room for Piwarz's additional enrollments
Saxony, a region in Germany, is taking proactive steps to integrate refugees into its school system. Minister Piwarz has been at the forefront of these efforts, addressing the challenges of personnel shortages, spatial capacity issues, and language learning.
The Minister has consistently emphasized the importance of integration, especially language learning, which requires dedicated personnel. To this end, Saxony benefits from federally backed initiatives that provide more funding for year-round integration courses, including practical and online German courses designed to support newcomers' language acquisition.
In the Döbeln area, a new education and integration project was launched mid-2025 to support children, teenagers, and young people with migration backgrounds or social disadvantages. This project recognizes their special needs and provides dedicated resources.
Local centres like the Central Saxony Employment and Migration Service Center (SAMM) offer support not only to skilled workers from abroad but also to their families, facilitating school or kindergarten enrollment and offering personal contact persons to clarify questions early on. Such support can indirectly aid schools by helping refugee families integrate more smoothly into the community.
Addressing the spatial capacity issue, Minister Piwarz has suggested a possible solution: the double use of school buildings, with school in the morning and DaZ classes (German as a second language) in the afternoon. This approach is intended to address the spatial capacity issue in integrating refugees into Saxony's school system.
However, it's important to note that the double use of school buildings is not a universal solution for all schools in Saxony. The feasibility of this approach is location-dependent and only feasible for secondary schools, not primary schools due to after-school care commitments.
Minister Piwarz continues to advocate for solutions to the spatial capacity issue, acknowledging that the double use of school buildings is only possible if it is locally feasible. E-learning offers are also intended to alleviate the problem of integrating refugees in Saxony's school system.
In summary, Saxony’s approach involves launching dedicated education and integration projects focusing on refugee children and youth, increasing federal funding for language courses, providing integration support personnel and contacts, addressing shortages in skilled personnel and bureaucratic hurdles in a coordinated manner, and exploring innovative solutions like the double use of school buildings and e-learning. These measures together reflect a multi-pronged strategy to overcome personnel, space, and language challenges within Saxony’s school system for refugee integration.
[1] Source: Saxony Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs [3] Source: Central Saxony Employment and Migration Service Center (SAMM)
- The Minister of Education and Cultural Affairs in Saxony, Germany, has advocated for e-learning as a potential solution to alleviate the spatial capacity issue in integrating refugees into schools, acknowledging that the double use of school buildings is only feasible if it is locally feasible.
- General news reports that the Central Saxony Employment and Migration Service Center (SAMM) offers support not only to skilled workers from abroad but also to their families, facilitating school or kindergarten enrollment, which aligns with the need for integration in politics and education-and-self-development.
