Germany’s Education Minister Karin Prien (CDU) has triggered national debate by suggesting a classroom quota for children with a migration background. In a televised interview on Welt, Prien said a cap of 30 or 40 percent might be worth exploring, referencing Denmark as a model. “It always makes sense to look at experiences from other countries,” she stated, emphasizing that the key issue remains ensuring that children are proficient in German when starting school.
Backlash from Integration Officials and Educators
The proposal has met with immediate resistance. Natalie Pawlik, Federal Commissioner for Integration and a member of the SPD, rejected the idea outright: “Germany doesn’t need quotas in classrooms.” Instead, she called for more investment in education infrastructure and emphasized the need to ensure every child—regardless of background—has access to quality learning opportunities. “We cannot afford for youth to leave school without a diploma.”
The German Teachers’ Association was also critical. President Stefan Düll said that while the idea may seem “ideally logical,” it’s practically unworkable. In areas where nearly half the population has a migration background, like Augsburg, balancing classes demographically is unrealistic. Düll added that language learning suffers when students rarely hear or use German outside of formal instruction.
Beyond Migration: Broader Educational Concerns
Prien stressed that education challenges extend beyond migrant communities. “We also face issues with children from families that have always lived here,” she said, pointing to changes in parenting and early childhood education. She called for increased parental responsibility, arguing that education is a shared task between families, schools, and kindergartens.
Because education policy is a matter for Germany’s individual states, any quota system—or mandatory language tests—would need to be agreed upon regionally or through federal consensus. While the CDU-SPD coalition supports national language testing for four-year-olds, its implementation remains uneven across the country. tagesschau.de
