Nursery schools: one in five children hardly speak German at home

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yesAccording to one report, almost no German is spoken at home for every five children in kindergarten. Among the around 3.2 million children in kindergartens, there are around 675,000 children whose families primarily do not speak German, the newspapers of the Funke media group report, citing a response from the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs to a request from the Parliamentary group FDP. This corresponds to a participation of 21.4 percent.

This means that the proportion of nursery school children who do not speak or barely speak German has increased even more, according to the report. In 2017, its share was 18.7 percent, in 2018 it was 19.4 percent.

The deputy leader of the FDP parliamentary group, Katja Suding, expressed her concern. “Language decides what chances a child has in life,” Funke told the newspapers. The increasing proportion of children from families in which German is not spoken calls for better language support.

Suding criticized the corresponding measures of the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs as inappropriate. The federal language daycare program is “an important component, but the funds available for it are insufficient.” Funds from the federal program would have to increase significantly starting in 2021.

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Currently, daycare centers with a special funding focus can receive € 25,000 per year from the federal “Language Daycare” program. As the ministry explains in the government response, funding should continue to amount to € 25,000 in 2021. This means that the amount of funding has remained unchanged since 2016. Nationwide, around one in ten daycare centers is a daycare center. of languages.