The educational foundation of Germany’s youth is showing significant cracks as data reveals a sharp rise in students being forced to repeat the first grade. This trend is most pronounced from those with a migration background, where language barriers and a lack of early childhood preparation are prevalent.
At the Nordmarkt elementary school in Dortmund, an alarming 97 percent of first-graders are forced to repeat the first grade, Focus Magazine reports. The primary drivers for this delay include a lack of basic skills and the fact that many children “hardly speak German.”
Germany’s school system is a major disaster due to mass immigration.
“More than 41,000 children across Germany had to repeat 1st grade last school year… Many of these children have a migrant background and hardly speak any German when they start school.”
Educators report… pic.twitter.com/svK70dMM9N
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) February 24, 2026
While Germany could always absorb a certain number of non-German speakers, the numbers have grown beyond the ability of educators. Now, nationwide, the statistics are stark and breaking records. Over 41,000 first graders across Germany are repeating their first year. Children with a migrant background — particularly those who did not attend daycare — are the most heavily affected.
Regional disparity is also high; in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), 22,894 students, equalling 6 percent of all students, repeated the grade last year, while states like Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg see rates as low as 1 to 2 percent. However, as states like Bavaria become more diverse, the future may also present increasing challenges for these states as well. Currently, native German speakers are a minority in 1 in 5 classrooms across Bavaria.
Concerns about classroom safety and language proficiency have been amplified by recent high-profile incidents reported elsewhere in Germany. In Ludwigshafen, teachers at the Karolina-Burger-Realschule Plus wrote a 10-page letter to authorities describing violence, threats, and severe disciplinary problems. “Ms. XY, aren’t you afraid that someone will stab you from behind when you stand with your back to the class?” one passage read, while another student allegedly shouted, “I’ll shoot you all.”
Police recorded 121 incidents at the school between 2022 and 2024, 118 of which resulted in criminal complaints, according to local reporting.
Beyond just language issues, violence from foreigners, assaults in their schools, harassment of women, and conflict between different ethnic groups.
In some schools, religious conflict is now commonplace. In Berlin, a primary school teacher said he endured months of abuse, including “Gay is disgusting,” and reported that some Muslim students told him he was a “disgrace to the family” who would “end up in hell,” with one student declaring, “Islam is in charge here.”
States are attempting to bridge the gap with language issues through various interventions, such as mandatory language tests aimed at 4-year-olds to identify needs early and specialized preschool classes used in Hamburg and Bavaria. North Rhine-Westphalia is also planning “ABC classes” designed to provide support prior to official school enrollment.
Despite these approaches, implementation is frequently hamstrung by the same staff shortages affecting the daycare sector. Educators warn of long-term consequences for education and society if the system continues to allow children to move forward without a solid grasp of basic knowledge.
China pulls ahead while Germany crashes
European countries like Germany continue their education downfall, with students now performing worse and worse in key subject areas, according to a new study. The fact that so many first graders are being left back illustrates that already concerning problems will likely grow in the future.
According to the “IQB Education Trend 2024,” which Humboldt University in Berlin presented and which was leaked to Bild newspaper, “fewer and fewer of the 48,000 students tested are achieving the standard standards and are failing the minimum requirements more often than in 2012 and 2018.”
These tests focus on math, biology, chemistry, and physics, considered key areas that underpin Germany’s technology and industrial edge.
Although there are a number of factors driving this collapse in the German education system, mass migration continues to be a major factor, if not the most definitive factor.
The study from Humboldt notes that the children of foreign nationals and refugees continue to perform worse in all subjects, including math, chemistry and physics, than classmates without a migration background.
Last year, the new education monitor from the German Economic Institute (IW) and the New Social Market Economy Initiative (INSM) documented the increasingly dire state of the education system. The study’s author, Axel Plünnecke, said the already bad situation has “further deteriorated slightly compared to 2024“ and noted the “situation in Germany’s schools remains bad.“
Plünnecke’s study found that there have been massive drops in the quality of the education system since 2013 compared to 2025. His large-scale study found that “integration and educational opportunities” saw a 43.7-point drop, while school quality saw a 28.2-point drop, and educational poverty rose by 26 points.
He points to 2015, the same year that Angela Merkel opened the border to mass immigration, as the turning point, describing it as a “watershed.”
The main reason? “Excessive demands due to high migration,” wrote Plünnecke.
He noted that many more children arrived in schools than the education ministers thought would be coming.
“In 2015, the school system was overwhelmed, and no quick answers were found to the challenges of increased refugee migration,” he wrote.
German classroom nightmare
Teachers mocked, lessons disrupted, and even physical assaults.
“I am no longer in control of the situation. I feel like a failure. The children here are just 12 years old.”
Stefan Düll, the president of the German Teachers’ Association, said… pic.twitter.com/fgOsq5JSAd
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) May 6, 2025
The decline in test scores and educational achievement has long been predicted by figures like Thilo Sarrazin, the former Bundesbank board member, who wrote in his 2010 book “Deutschland schafft sich ab” (“Germany Is Abolishing Itself”) that test scores, including in PISA, would continue to fall due to mass immigration.
Recently, Sarrazin stated that his predictions of educational decline have proven accurate, arguing that international benchmarks such as PISA now show a marked drop in student performance across the board, a trend he attributes largely to immigration-related demographic changes. While acknowledging that digital distractions like mobile phones also play a role, he maintained that the growing share of students from lower-performing backgrounds is the primary driver.
“The fact is not only that the decline of primary education has progressed much further than I expected, but also that there remain roughly the same differences in performance between groups of pupils based on their background,” he said.
Notably, Asian countries that rejected mass immigration, such as China, are pulling far ahead of Germany in terms of PISA test results. In addition, China is increasingly outcompeting Germany in key tech areas, green energy and automobile manufacturing.
Meanwhile, other Asian countries like Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan – all known for ultra-restrictionist immigration policies – are dominating the top spots. Notably, China has fewer migrants in the entire country than just one German city, Berlin.
China also happened to score the top spot in all three PISA categories in 2018. Beijing did not provide enough data to be counted in the 2022 survey due to pandemic-related school closures, but the country continues to pull ahead of Germany economically in many sectors, including the machine tools industry, renewable technology, AI, and automobile production.
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