Munich primary school/grundschule for non english speakers

[hackneymunchen]

Hi everyone,

I am looking for some recent experiences on attending a state school in Munich or closeby. I have gone through a lot of threads on German Primary schools mostly from 2008 and earlier and it looks like they say the following:

1. The style of education is more old school with emphasis on homework, fitting in and kids with SEN seem to have it tougher than in London.
2. If you don't speak German as a 6y old, either they send you out of town to a school where they let you in or ask you to repeat a year in kindergarten to get your German up to speed.

I am hoping things have changed for the better in this regard esp with a number of refugees. One would expect they would work on including non german speaking kids in mainstream schools than send them out etc.

We are likely to move as my dh's job is being moved to Munich from London and with 3 kids, 6, 4 and 1, private school is not an option. And the relocation is not what one would describe as generous but we are open to trying something new provided the kids stay happy, they really love their current school/nursery in London.

Moving from Dalston, Munich feels like a fairly conservative place, perhaps not for Bavaria 

All the other bits, outdoors, safety, the mountains are all great and we are looking forward to that. But education is making me nervous and I would love to hear about recent experiences.

Please tell me they now offer good support for non native speakers while keeping them at school  or not...

Would love to hear back from you....

[butterfly990]

Munich is a lovely city. You may find more information on a forum like this. Good luck with your move.

www.expatforum.com/expats/germany-expat-forum-expats-living-germany/

[butterfly990]

www.expatforum.com/expats/germany-expat-forum-expats-living-germany/360961-adaptation-english-speaking-children-german-public-schools.html

[hackneymunchen]

Hi, thanks for that, but most of the responses from expatforum are much older. Would you have any recent experiences ?

[lifeisunjust]

Choose to live somewhere convenient for work and find the nearest grundschulen. If you re looking for best for non German speakers, well how many people have experience of several schools? There are 1000s of immigrants in Munich, you re not alone. An extra year at kindergarten if necessary may be a good idea. There is no hang up about repeating years in continental Europe.

[5moreminutes]

I've just written a very long winded reply on the general Germany thread, oops

The opportunity to do a year of Kindergarten is a good thing though - think carefully before rejecting that. I often wish I'd left my eldest another year at Kindergarten, but I had this stupid British hang up about 6 year olds needing to be at school - of course they bloody don't. As it was DD started as the youngest child in her class at 5 years 11 months (in Bavaria you start school by default if you will be 6 by the end of that September, but of course in fact everyone with summer babies holds them back, so she was the youngest by several months).

She's done fine, but the older she gets the older the children in her class get, as some have repeated year 5 (if they don't get good grades in year 4 they go to Mittleschule, but if they get top grades there they can then go to Realschule and do year 5 again - loads and loads do, about 1/4 of her Realschule class). Two of her youngest year 6 friends failed the year and are repeating year 6 while she is moving on to year 7... The average age in the class keeps getting older!

There are all sorts of concerns later - by year 9 lots of the kids are riding mopeds and drinking beer (not both at once hopefully) and its legal to leave school after 9 years of schooling - DD will have completed 9 years when she is still 14! At least my DS1, who I did hold back will be 15 - but kids who have been held back and repeated a year are 16, and some repeat more than one year, what with messing about repeating year 5 if they do well at Mittleschule to change schools and then possibly failing a year later, so they are 17...

I'd rather an old for the year kid than a 13 year old being pressured into hopping on the back of a classmates moped...

[Crystaltips68]

Hallo Hackneymunchen, we are in Munich. Staying an extra year in Kindergarten for your 6 year old is a good option. Most Kindergartens in Munich offer Vorkurse Deutsch. This is aimed at non-German speaking children and aims to help with the basic language skills. Depending on where you live, some Grundschule have an Übergangsklasse for children that do not speak German. The children attend this class until they are ready to join the main body of children. Coming from the U.K. your 6 year old will be ahead with reading and writing. In Germany very basic reading,writing and maths is taught in some Kindergartens but most wait until school at 6 so this should take some of the pressure off. There are many bi-lingual kindergartens in Munich for your 4 year old. PM me if you need a list.
When are you moving? Do you have time to join a German speaking club in London before you leave?
Munich is a lovely family friendly city. You'll really enjoy it here.
Good Luck with your move.

[Nellietheeuropean]

Hello, Just wanted to add another perspective - we've just moved to Munich with our 6 year old non-German speaking child. She is going straight in to the local Grundschule, 1st class, in September. We met them in May and far from saying that she should go to Kindergarten for a year, they were wondering whether to start her in the second class. They were worried that having done 2 years of school in the UK, she might be bored. In the end we all agreed that putting her into the right year group would be best, and give her chance to learn German. The headteacher said that in her experience, children starting in her school aged 6 with no German are speaking German by Christmas. We have been teaching her some German over the summer, but she is not really phased by starting with little German. I think she was reassured by the attitude of the teachers we met who just said very matter of factly "you will be able to do it". As to what support there will be in practice I don't know yet but we will find out soon.... We have been here a month and are enjoying it. Good luck with your move.

[Nellietheeuropean]

One other thing - finding a school place for our 6 year old was easy, as once you have an address, you automatically get a place at your local catchment school. Kindergarten on the other hand - there are loads around, and they all seem really nice (I visited quite a few!) but getting a place is apparently very difficult. I think we struck lucky as we were offered a place at our nearest Kindergarten within 3 weeks of registering on the Kitafinder website. I have been told by lots of people that it isn't always this easy - just something to bear in mind if you did want to put your 6 year old into Kindergarten, that you might not find a place straight away.

[lifeisunjust]

Speaking I'm German by Christmas,? Well ja under nein. Ridiculous claim. How lobg did it take 6 year olds you know to become fluent in home language? Try 4 years not 4 months.

The average 6 year old immersed into a new school language will achieve functional new language in a year and reasonable fluency in 2 years.

[5moreminutes]

Speaking German by Christmas :o

That sounds like the kind of absolute nonsense clueless people spout - the same people who use the adage "children are flexible" as a get out of jail free card for not taking the children into consideration whatsoever and only concentrating on themselves...

Yes - a confident child will be speaking some German by Christmas - some people produce the new language right from the start, where others stay silent for 6 months until they understand a reasonable amount. Both are valid learning styles, but the child producing set phrases and understanding simple instructions by Christmas is still years off fluency, and is still missing most of what is actually going on verbally around them.

A little American girl started our primary last year and had left by Christmas because she was deeply unhappy not understanding anything - the other children played non verbally with her (tag etc) but nobody spoke to her because she didn't understand a word... She wasn't in the same class as my DS1 (who was the only one of my children in the school at that time) and he didn't realise she was an English speaker until called in to translate something by other children not long before she left, because she just never spoke...

Of course there are kids who will take it in their stride and flourish, but chucking a child in to sink or swim in a formal classroom setting, with children who already know one another from Kindergarten, an entirely foreign language environment is an absolutely enormous ask of the child!

I also know, from back when I still made the effort to travel to English speaking groups, of children actually born here but who speak only English at home who have not coped at school despite already being able to read before they started and parents being confident they are bright etc. Those children had mixed almost exclusively in English speaking ex pat circles before school and so "spoke" German but very much as a foreign language - even not instinctively knowing articles is a disadvantage. By year 2 children are marked on dictations (instead of spelling tests) and every incorrect article knocks off a mark - and with it a grade. So get 4 der/die/das etc wrong and you've got a 4 (a D).

[hackneymunchen]

Hi everyone,
Thanks so much for all your responses. So it looks like it's either kindergarten or ubergangsklasse and year 1 for our 6 year old.
@Crystaltips68: We are likely to move after Christmas. We never considered the german speaking club but that sounds like a good idea, will look into it.

[calabalamuc]

Hi hackneymunchen! I have bilingual kids in the state system in Bavaria (out in the sticks though, not in Munich).

The style of schooling here is definitely old school - teaching to the class, no group work, sitting in rows from year one, very structured homework every day, emphasis on marks in tests. The whole thing is the very opposite of the touchy-feely-ness of my school days! And in these respects, Bavaria is more traditional than the rest of Germany and even Germans from elsewhere in Germany are very critical of the Bavarian school system.

BUT I have to add my kids know no better and are happy as pigs in shit here. Plus the focus here on grammar and spelling actually warms the cockles of my heart because I wasn't taught much grammar in the Scottish school system of the 70s and 80s, at least not until I studied foreign languages!

My kids' school is very multinational as a result of the influx of refugees - my DD's class of 19 had eight nationalities in it, some of whom joined the class with no German whatsoever. These kids do communicate well very quickly. It's not perfect grammar and they don't have the breadth of vocab of native speakers but I am blown away by how adaptable these children are. And I am pretty wowed by the teachers at my kids' school who I think accommodated all this upheaval with not much in the way of extra resources.

If your DD does a year at KG before starting school in Germany, I would bet she won't appear much older than her classmates when she starts school. I know from my DD's class there was about 16 months in age difference between the youngest and the oldest in her class.

If you have any more questions, feeling free to ask away!