Germany to Hire Ukrainian Teachers to Educate Ukrainian Refugee Children

Germany is considering recruiting teachers from its refugee population in the hopes of reinforcing its school system, which is reportedly being overwhelmed as a result of an influx of children fleeing Ukraine.

Schools in Germany are reportedly struggling to handle a sudden influx of Ukrainian children into the country as a result of the ongoing Ukraine war.

As a result, the Federal Republic is now considering the possibility of recruiting teachers from its refugee population to bolster affected schools, with teachers also likely to be pulled out of retirement to help deal with the surge in students.

According to a report by Die Welt, the country’s Federal Minister for Education,  Bettina Stark-Watzinger, is backing the scheme, along with authorities in Bavaria and Thuringia.

“Refugee Ukrainian teachers will certainly want to and be able to help,” said Stark-Watzinger regarding the overwhelmed system, which has been put under pressure as a result of Germany wanting to give every child arrival a slot in a German school.

Meanwhile, Bavaria’s Minister of Education, Michael Piazolo, has said that schools in the state would have to be expanded in order to deal with the increase in demand.

“I am firmly convinced that we have to create additional capacities,” he said, also noting that new classes would likely have to be formed and teachers would need to be brought out of retirement.

Authorities in Thuringia seem to be taking a similar approach, giving special emphasis to bringing retired Russian teachers back into schools, with the language being somewhat mutually intelligible for Ukrainian speakers.

“It’s about enabling communication and, for example, supporting teachers in class,” said a spokesman for the country’s Ministry for Education, who also emphasised that it wasn’t just Russian speakers that the state was looking for.

Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine has created a refugee crisis dwarfing that of the mass migration seen in 2015.

With more than two million people fleeing from Ukraine since the conflict escalated late last month, the crisis has become the fastest-growing of its kind since the end of the Second World War.

While Germany’s school system now appears to be struggling under the load, the central European country is not the one taking the brunt of the crisis, with Poland taking in over a million of those fleeing the invaded nation.

However, despite being the vanguard nation dealing with the crisis, the European Parliament has passed a resolution targeting the country — along with Hungary, which has also been taking in refugees via its Ukrainian border — for alleged breaches of European “rule of law”.

As a result, funding from the European Union that would otherwise be granted to Poland may end up being withheld.

“Rule of law is laid down in the EU treaties as one of the values on which the Union is based,” a post on the matter on the EU’s website reads. “…EU budget payments can be [withheld] from countries where established breaches of the rule of law compromise management of EU funds. At the same time, the EU ensures that final beneficiaries do not end up paying the bill.”