Germany: Every fifth child in daycare hardly speaks any German at home

One in five kindergarten children hardly speaks German at home: This is the result of a response from the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs to a request from the FDP parliamentary group in the Bundestag, on which the newspapers of the Funke media group (Saturday editions) report.

Berlin - Accordingly, among the around 3.2 million children in day-care centers, there were recently around 675,000 children whose families primarily do not speak German - a share of around 21.4 percent. Compared to 2017 (18.7 percent) and 2018 (19.4 percent), the proportion of these children has increased further in the past year. The deputy leader of the FDP parliamentary group, Katja Suding, expressed concern: "Language decides what chances a child has in life," Suding told the Funke media group newspapers.

The increased proportion of children from families in which German is not spoken calls for better language support. In this context, Suding criticized the family ministry's measures: "The federal language day-care center program is an important component, but the funds made available for it are insufficient." The funds of the federal program would have to be increased significantly from 2021.

Currently, daycare centers with a special focus on funding from the federal program "Language Daycare Centers" can receive 25,000 euros per year, the newspapers report. As the ministry explains in the government response, the funding should continue to amount to 25,000 euros in 2021. This means that the amount of funding would have remained unchanged since 2016.

About every tenth daycare center nationwide is a language daycare center.

Source: Dernewsticker.de

Photo: DPA