According to the Protestant daycare association of Bavaria (evKITA), the planned German tests for daycare children would lead to an additional burden on employees. According to current calculations by the Bertelsmann Foundation, daycare employees are absent due to illness significantly more often than employees in other professional groups, evKITA announced on Friday.
If employees are missing, the burden and extra work for the others increases, said Christiane Münderlein, head of education and social affairs at evKITA. Against this background, the state government’s planned regulation on compulsory language tests before school enrollment is viewed critically. evKITA currently represents around 700 providers. Protestant daycare centers across Bavaria currently offer more than 110,000 places for children in around 1,600 facilities.
The association also fears that additional administrative costs will arise in the facilities that will not be refinanced. Parents will certainly have many questions about the tests and certificates for the educational professionals, which will lead to further burdens, said Münderlein. The money planned for the testing procedure would be better spent on expanding daycare places or on additional language specialists and language specialist advice in daycare centers and elementary schools, said the evKITA board member.
All children should be tested on their German language skills
On July 23, the Bavarian state government announced that all children aged around four and a half would be tested for their German language skills. If a need for support is identified, the child would be required to “attend a daycare center with an integrated preparatory German course.” The language tests will be carried out by local primary schools. Children could also be deferred from school enrollment after a further test when registering for school, it said. The new procedure will be used for the first time for children who will start school in September 2026. At the beginning of 2025, parents will receive a letter from the responsible primary school with all further information.
Since then, the plan has been criticized from several sides. Tanja Brandl-Götz, head of the Childhood Education course at the Evangelical University of Nuremberg (EVHN), sees the planned German tests for daycare children as a “huge step backwards in educational policy.” The state government’s draft law would not integrate children, but rather exclude them, criticizes Brandl-Götz. There are also many unanswered structural questions, for example, “how the daycare and primary school systems, which are already overwhelmed, are supposed to handle this additional task in the interests of the children,” says Brandl-Götz.
Too much bureaucratization
The dual leadership of the Bavarian Workers’ Welfare Association (AWO), Nicole Schley and Stefan Wolfshörndl, also criticised the planned language tests. “Bavaria is once again bureaucratising itself to death,” they warned in a statement at the beginning of August. Instead of investing money in controls and tests, sufficient funds should be put into the system and parents should be approached proactively, said Schley and Wolfshörndl.
The Bavarian Minister for Family Affairs, Ulrike Scharf (CSU), defended the plans at the beginning of August. It is important to reach all children, not just those in daycare centers, before school starts. “We have to find new ways to help children learn our language as early as possible,” she said. The new concept ensures that children receive language support in a more targeted and earlier manner. The “German Preparatory Course 240” is established and well-known. “We are using this structure in a targeted manner to create a feasible, practical concept,” said Scharf.
