Young people increasingly perceive school as alien to life

According to a study by the private Dresden University of Applied Sciences, school is increasingly perceived by young people as “unrealistic”. The University of Applied Sciences (FHD) announced on Friday that it was perceived as a “place of rigid structures” in which schoolchildren could only contribute to a limited extent. School must again be recognized by children and young people as an opportunity for personal and professional development in order to counteract the phenomenon of school absenteeism.

From September 2019 to March 2023, a FHD research team was commissioned by the Dresden Youth Welfare Office to investigate the background to school refusal. The role played by family and school was also questioned. Both are significant influencing factors that favor school absenteeism or counteract it, it said. “If there is already a distance to the education system in the family environment, this may be passed on to children.”

The family environment has a major influence on school matters

Stressful situations within the family or a lack of parental involvement or a lack of interest in the child’s everyday school life could also encourage absenteeism from class. The scientists recommended integrating the family environment more closely into school matters, for example through intensive work with parents, the expansion of parent-child offers in schools or the establishment of ongoing support offers for parents.

Refusal to go to school is one of the reasons for the comparatively high number of girls and boys who leave school without a qualification. According to the Saxon Ministry of Culture, this affected 2,775 schoolchildren last year and thus 8.5 percent of school leavers. The year before it was 8.8 percent. “We need to keep doing our homework to get more students out of school with degrees. The gap between top performance and failure must not widen further,” Minister of Education Christian Piwarz (CDU) recently declared. The increased heterogeneity in society as a whole is also reflected in schools. “The answer to this must be provided with diverse and individual learning opportunities and with sufficiently well-trained teachers.” However, it is also clear that schools “cannot be the sole repair shop for developments in society as a whole”.