German Teachers' Association calls for migration quotas at schools

GENEVA

The German Teachers' Association head has called for quotas for students with an immigrant background in German schools, according to local media.

"We have an integration problem in Germany," Heinz-Peter Meidinger told the German daily Bild on Wednesday.

If integration is to be successful, "mandatory preschool support, nationwide language proficiency tests, and migration quotas" must be introduced, Meidinger said.

He also noted that integration is not successful if, for example, 95% of students in classes at the so-called "hotspot schools" are not German.

According to Meidinger, "from a proportion of 35% of children with an immigrant background in a class, performance declines disproportionately." However, Meidinger did not say how he arrived at this figure.

The definition of the term "immigrant background" is not clear-cut in Germany. It is often understood to mean that a person or at least one parent, was not born with German citizenship.

According to Article 3 of the German constitution, no one in country may be discriminated against or given preferential treatment because of, among other things, "their ancestry, race, language, homeland and origin, faith, religious, or political views."