Controversial Findings Rekindle Education Debate

The most recent findings of the PISA study have raised a delicate question for German parents: Do their own children learn less well when there is a high proportion of immigrant children in the class?

For Germany, it is another difficult issues presented by PISA, the Program for International Student Assessment. Last year, this comparative study of scholastic achievement carried out by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development stunned the country with its finding that 15-year-old Germans performed only 22nd overall among the 32 advanced industrial countries tested, and near the bottom in some important categories.

The latest findings, presented officially on Thursday but widely reported earlier in the week, stated that in Germany the average performance of schools “shrinks drastically“ if 20 percent or more of the pupils are immigrants or the children of immigrants.

The issue of more effective integration policies for Germany's large immigrant population has become important at the political level in recent years, and one of the factors driving it is concern that many immigrant children are showing up at school with little or no knowledge of German. Privately, many German parents express concern that this is holding their children back, and the latest PISA findings could add to these arguments.

However, PISA reported that academic performance is not necessarily better at schools with smaller proportions of immigrant children, and varies substantially from state to state. Moreover, the report states that if only German students are assessed, the overall reading ability result improves only slightly.

The chairman of the German teachers' union, the GEW, warned against the conclusion that immigrants are somehow to blame. “Immigrants' children and students from less well-off families are victims of the German school system, and not the reason for its weak performance,“ said Eva-Maria Stange.

Hesse Education Minister Karin Wolff, who heads the conference of state education ministers, said better pre-school language teaching was required for immigrant children. Wolff said she would not support any cap on the number of foreigners in a given class, as has previously been proposed by representatives of her Christian Democratic Union and Germany's governing Social Democratic Party.