Kretschmer criticized for words on migrants and schools

His coalition partners, the SPD and the Greens, have sharply criticized head of government Michael Kretschmer (CDU) following his comments on a burden on schools as a result of high migrant numbers. SPD education expert Sabine Friedel said on Friday she was "appalled by such a distortion of the facts."

The portal "Sächsische.de" had quoted Kretschmer as saying on Thursday after a discussion at Bautzen's Schiller Gymnasium: "We can no longer guarantee the quality of education because we have to school students who come from outside." Friedel rejected that. He said that one must take responsibility instead of shifting blame.

SPD top candidate and social affairs minister Petra Köpping also spoke up: "Neither Ukrainian children nor underage refugees are to blame for the fact that wrong decisions were made in Saxony 15 years ago," Köpping said. "I can only recommend that the CDU stop pointing fingers at others and start solving the homemade problems with the teacher shortage. These are all excuses with which one shirks one's own responsibility."

Sabine Friedel argued, "We can no longer guarantee the quality of education because the Saxon education system was underfunded for decades. Because today the schools lack the teachers who were not hired fifteen years ago. Because no buffer is planned for and the system is drastically on edge."

Every wave of colds, every small increase in birth rates, and even the reception of refugee children and young people thereby lead to teaching shortfalls, he said. "But it is absolutely shameful to now point the finger at those who come 'from outside'," said the SPD politician. It is urgently necessary that the prime minister and his party give up their "so-little-as-possible mentality and recognize that systems need buffers to be efficient," Friedel stressed.

The SPD junior organization Juso even spoke of "agitation." "The prime minister is apparently more busy looking for scapegoats for the failed CDU education policy than really addressing the problems," said Juso state vice president Lukas Peger. "The fact that Michael Kretschmer now makes refugees responsible for the shortage of teachers is tasteless and fires xenophobia in Saxony unnecessarily further."

Criticism also came from the ranks of the third coalition partner, the Greens. "It is nonsense that refugees endanger the quality of education in the Free State," said Christin Melcher, education expert of the Greens in the state parliament. "Such statements are just in the currently already tense situation water on the mills of those who quite deliberately agitate against people in need of protection."

The current situation has nothing to do with the schooling of refugee minors, emphasized Left politician Luise Neuhaus-Wartenberg. She also said: the Prime Minister shifts responsibility and promotes the "scapegoat theory".

Kretschmer had repeatedly called for a containment of migration. "The numbers must dramatically down in the coming year, in the year after next under 100 000," he told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur on Thursday. He advocated limiting family reunification, reducing social benefits for rejected asylum seekers and continuing border controls in the future.

A "toolbox" must be available by the end of the year, Kretschmer added. "To reduce the number of illegal migrants so that this also works again. With kindergartens, with schools, with German courses, with housing."