Page 50 - IO1-Report

KA201 - Strategic Partnerships for School Education
The Universal Language of Mathematics (2018-1-TR01-KA201-059704)

5. Summary and Conclusion

Refugees should not only receive asylum in Germany and thus protection from war and persecution.
They should find access to society; they should be able to participate and shape it. This is one of the
reasons why the education system, as described above, is so important as a building block of integration.
As shown above, many services and projects have been developed in recent years to support refugee
pupils in their arrival and integration into the German education system. Nevertheless, the need to firmly
establish structures and support systems for the integration of immigrants, the understanding of
language and multilingualism, reliable and multi-professional support, the embedding of school activities
in a network, the provision of teaching materials tailored to the needs of refugees, the integration into
informal learning settings represent some starting points for the sustainable further development of the
German education system in order to make schools compatible in a multicultural society.
(Jungkamp/John-Ohnesorg 2016)
Italy has come a long way in the process of transition from an emigration into an immigration country.
It has a wide experience in receiving big numbers of migrant and refugees over the past 40-45 years,
starting from Eritrean, Ethiopian and Kosovar refugees in the late 90s and large numbers of migrants
from West Africa in the 2010s. However, with steep increase in numbers in recent years and the
respective response within the political system in the country, the reception systems and even the legal
situation of many of migrant/refugee people, especially minors, have changed drastically. Together with
the imperfections of the school system, it makes their integration into their new society much more
difficult. There is a serious need for specialised trainings for school staff (teachers, school psychologists
and guidance counsellors, principals) on the main competences needed for the effective work with pupils
with migrant/refugee background. Consequently, there are already impressive results from said
trainings, implemented in different regions of Italy, and from other good practices, described above.
However, there is room for improvement in order to embrace the children in an education system that
plays an important role in their process of integration.

With almost 1.7 million of refugee children in Turkey, the Turkish school system has faced serious
challenges. Due to its recent transition to an immigration country, Turkey still develops new policies to
handle the challenges more accurately and appropriately. Especially with the influx of refugees from
Syria in the last 10 years, Turkey was forced to take action. Focusing on education, we can say that
although Turkey was a little late to create new policies on the status of refugee children, Turkey has
come a long way with good progress. Turkey still tries to reach children who do not have access to
education, to increase the enrolment rate but Turkey should also develop more elaborate ways to
monitor pupils’ attendance rate and try to increase their learning efficiency in classes. Language courses’
effectiveness could be tried to be improved. Since the public-school system and curriculum in Turkey
are intended for national pupils, multicultural activities should be added to the curriculum to reach a
wider scope of student profiles. But also the sociocoenomic situation of the refugees must be improved
by regulations - this concerns in particular improved laws to prohibit child labour or early marriage. So,
Turkey needs to improve its standards in education or in socioeconomic life to be able to better integrate
the refugees into the society and to create good and respectful learning environments for both local
and foreign pupils.

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