Sigrid Lupieri
Public Information Officer, UNESCO MGIEP

Six months ago, 57-year-old Mohamad Akram Halawa was a farmer living on the outskirts of Damascus. Today, he is one of 40 Syrian refugees living in a bright yellow house near the centre of Augsburg, Germany. He sits at the head of the table in a crowded room furnished with three beds and a wardrobe. His wife and one of his nephews sit on each side and listen to the retelling of a story they know very well—their escape from war-torn Syria.

After selling their farm and belongings, Halawa and 12 members of his extended family managed to scrape together enough money to pay smugglers to help them flee across the Syrian border. For almost a month, the family traveled through the night with little to eat along the way. “I can’t describe it,” Halawa says of the 3,400km journey to Germany. Now, the father of six hopes his children will receive an education, integrate into German society and build a better future.

With more than 1 million refugees from Syria estimated to have reached Germany by the end of 2015, stories such as Halawa’s are becoming increasingly common. And while the refugees often come from very different backgrounds, a shared hope is that education in Germany can pave the way towards a brighter future. However, accommodating this sudden influx of children and young adults into German-speaking classrooms is a challenge Germany is struggling to overcome.

While previous years saw an average of 40,000-50,000 refugees arriving in Germany, since 2014 these numbers have risen exponentially. In the state of Bavaria in southern Germany, thousands of refugees have been pouring in every day having made long journeys through neighboring countries. While many of these refugees are then sent on to other locations in Germany based on a quota system, nearly 15 percent of all Syrian refugees in Germany end up remaining in the area. In the Bavarian city of Augsburg, which has a total population of 300,000, more than 3,000 refugees have recently settled.

“The refugees that are arriving today are very heterogeneous and are not all necessarily educated. We have children who are 12 or 13 years old who have never been to school, and children and young people who cannot read and write.”
Ingrid Rehm-Kronenbitter, School inspector, Augsburg

For Ingrid Rehm-Kronenbitter, a school inspector dealing with refugee children in Augsburg, one of the main challenges is the neglect with which education is often treated in conflict and crisis situations.

For students arriving from war-torn countries who have sometimes spent months or even years in refugee camps, school attendance has often been interrupted. “The refugees that are arriving today are very heterogeneous and are not all necessarily educated,” Rehm-Kronenbitter says. “We have children who are 12 or 13 years old who have never been to school, and children and young people who cannot read and write.”

Other challenges include finding qualified teachers to teach German as a second language, suitable textbooks for teaching basic literacy skills to older children, and trained specialists to support children dealing with emotional trauma or physical challenges. Even more difficult has been providing suitable education for children around the age of 16—when education is no longer compulsory. For 14- or 15-year-olds who do not speak German, time is running out for them to pick up a new language and benefit from the regular classroom experience.

“We accept everyone into the school system so that they have a chance…I believe that every child that comes here has a right to quality education.”
Ingrid Rehm-Kronenbitter, School Inspector, Augsburg

However, as part of a nation-wide effort to integrate children into the German school system, the city of Augsburg has set up 40 transitional programmes for children between the ages of six and 16. These courses focus on imparting language skills and bringing children up to speed with the German curriculum. According to Rehm-Kronenbitter, most children make the transition into the regular classroom within one or two years. For older children, who are no longer required to attend mandatory schooling, one option is to enroll in vocational training schools which provide skills-based training required to pursue a trade or profession. Special transitional classes now prepare refugee children above the age of 16 for the German job market.

“Whatever their status, we accept everyone into the school system so that they have a chance,” says Rehm-Kronenbitter about the Education Authority’s efforts in dealing with the crisis. “We have to manage it even if the numbers (of refugees) keep growing. I believe that every child that comes here
has a right to quality education.”

According to Dr. Stefan Kiefer, the mayor of Augsburg, one of the challenges he is working on is instilling a greater feeling of acceptance among the city’s residents. To this end, he organizes groups of volunteers to help refugees living in government housing and sets up neighborhood meetings for German residents to interact with their new neighbors. “The people in our city need to get to know the refugees to overcome their fears,” Kiefer says. “We have to work together.”

Yasmin Kanhash Khedir and her son

For most refugees, education is essential to creating stability and hope in the face of uncertainty. In one of the government apartments set aside for refugees in Augsburg, Yasmin Kanhash Khedir and her two children are among 10 other families crowding into a three-story building. Before arriving in Germany, the 28-year-old single mother had fended for herself in Turkey where she worked odd jobs as a waitress to make ends meet. The money, however, was not enough to send her children to school. “Now they have been going to school for the past month,” Khedir says of her eight-year-old son and nine-year-old daughter. “They are happy to be able to go back to school.” Their future, she adds, now lies in Germany.

Mohammed Nur, a bright 11-year-old with an infectious smile, also lives in the house with his father. Since arriving in Germany, he has been separated from his mother and three sisters who are living in a refugee camp in another city. Despite his father’s increasingly desperate attempts to reunite the family, bureaucratic hurdles have prevented them from residing in the same place. In the meantime, however, Mohammed has learned German and loves his school. While he doesn’t know what he wants to be when he grows up, he knows his future will likely be in Germany. “In Syria, everything is broken,” he says.

For the Halawa family, life and an appearance of normalcy seem to have resumed. On a blustery day in November, they celebrated a new addition to the family—their first child born in Germany. Passing around a bowl filled with chocolates, Halawa says he is grateful to Germany for the opportunities it has afforded him and his relatives. Especially when it comes to education, he has high hopes for his younger family members. Halawa’s 15-year-old nephew, Ahmed, is studying hard at one of the transitional school programmes and hopes to enter the regular classroom soon. “I want to become a doctor,” Ahmed says.