As part of the written hearing conducted by the Committee on Schools and Education and the Committee on Family, Children, and Youth of the North Rhine-Westphalia State Parliament, Dr. Seyran Bostancı, Dr. Anna Aleksandra Wojciechowicz, and Benedikt Wirth submitted an academic opinion on the motion filed by the FDP parliamentary group (Document No. 18/18111). In it, the authors examine the proposed measures from a perspective that analyzes early childhood education within the context of a society shaped by migration and critically assesses them in terms of their potential impact on educational inequalities.
Specifically, the following measures are being proposed: a mandatory language assessment for all children aged four, as well as a preparatory year for elementary school (ABC classes). The goal is to identify children with language development needs at an early stage and to prepare them specifically for starting school.
However, the statement concludes that neither measure is particularly effective in reducing educational inequalities. Instead, there is a risk of further exacerbating existing inequalities. In particular, the authors criticize the fact that the proposal views linguistic educational inequalities primarily as an individual problem affecting children and families, while structural causes are largely ignored.
One major point of criticism concerns the planned language proficiency assessments. Bostancı, Wojciechowicz, and Wirth point out that language screenings of this kind are primarily standardized for children who grow up monolingually. Their usefulness in assessing multilingual development is therefore limited. This creates the risk of systematic misjudgments, in which multilingual children are hastily classified as needing language support, even though their language development is proceeding at an age-appropriate level. Furthermore, diagnostic procedures cannot be viewed in isolation from institutional assessment patterns, which expose migrant children to an increased risk of being disadvantaged.
The statement also takes a critical view of the planned preparatory year for school, or the “ABC” classes. The authors point out that, to date, there is no convincing scientific evidence of the effectiveness of additive and separate language support measures. At the same time, such models carry the risk of separating children from one another even before they start school, stigmatizing them at an early age, and further exacerbating existing educational inequalities. Research findings, on the other hand, support inclusive educational settings in which children learn together and acquire language through everyday experiences.
Another key focus of the statement is on the structural causes of educational inequalities related to language. Many children face unequal starting conditions even before they start school because they have no or only limited access to high-quality early childhood education. The planned language assessments therefore do not begin until a point in time when educational inequalities have, in many cases, already emerged. As long as barriers to early education remain, there is a risk that structurally rooted disadvantages will be interpreted as individual shortcomings on the part of the children.
Instead of introducing additional selection tools, barriers to access must be removed to ensure that all children have access to high-quality early childhood education. As an alternative, the authors advocate for a consistent strengthening of inclusive educational structures: language education integrated into daily life and sensitive to multilingualism in daycare settings, better resources and (further) professional development for daycare staff, as well as mandatory cooperation between daycare centers and elementary schools. It is not the children who should have to adapt to a system designed with their needs in mind; rather, educational institutions must be “child-friendly” and accommodate the diversity of a society of immigrants from day one.
The detailed statement by Dr. Bostancı, Dr. Wojciechowicz, and Wirth can be read here: