A recent study by the German Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB) has found that Ukrainian children and adolescents in Germany feel less connected to their school than their peers without a refugee background. The study, which surveyed 11- to 17-year-olds who had fled from Ukraine, found that a school visit can have a stabilizing effect on these young people.
According to the study’s co-author, Katharina Spieß, students who feel accepted and supported at their school show a higher learning motivation and a higher self-awareness. Therefore, the development of a sense of belonging to a school is a crucial building block for integration in Germany.
Most of the surveyed Ukrainian minors, however, show a relatively low sense of belonging to their school. In comparison, adolescents from Syria or Afghanistan, who had arrived in Germany about two years prior, showed an above-average sense of school belonging.
Older students from Ukraine in particular have a lower sense of belonging, whereas those who see their future in Germany long-term and have improved their German language skills feel more connected to their school.
The language competence of Ukrainian children and adolescents has recently improved significantly. While more than 92% of them had no German language skills upon arrival, over half (51%) of the students reported speaking good or very good German in the summer of 2024 and a further 35% described their German language skills as not good but not bad either.
In the summer of the previous year, almost all the surveyed children and adolescents attended regular classes. Only 9% took advantage of special classes for refugees for some subjects and only 6% sat in these classes exclusively. Immediately after their arrival in Germany, around a third of the children and adolescents had attended such special classes.
The study surveyed nearly 500 children and adolescents who had arrived in Germany with their families in the first four months after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. 71% of the respondents answered the questions online, mostly in Ukrainian.