Integration courses usually last a few months. More than 22,000 people from Ukraine have already started such a course in Baden-Württemberg.

Stuttgart/Nuremberg (dpa/lsw) – The integration courses in Baden-Württemberg are in demand: So far, 77,100 entitlements to participate have been granted in the south-west from January to the beginning of November, according to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) in Nuremberg. Germany is thus heading for a record value. According to the BAMF, there have already been around 560,000 such authorizations nationwide this year, which is around 25,000 more than in the previous record year 2016. The courses were therefore introduced in 2005.

Most participations in the year to date have been made possible in North Rhine-Westphalia (114,000) and Bavaria (84,800) as well as in the south-west. A large part of the nationwide entitlements went to people from Ukraine (around 355,300) so far – 162,900 of them have already started a course. In Baden-Württemberg there were 48,600 people – 22,000 of them have already completed the offer.

According to the Federal Office, it can take a certain amount of time before the right course is found, which is why the start of the course is often delayed after the authorization and the placement test have been issued.

According to the information, integration courses consist of a total of 700 hours. The language part makes up 600 hours, the other 100 hours are about values, the legal system or the social system. The courses are put together according to the respective language level and are aimed at all immigrants – regardless of their origin. Only adults attend these integration courses; school attendance is compulsory for minors.

According to the Federal Office, the integration courses for Ukraine refugees were opened in mid-March 2022. These courses usually last seven to nine months, and special and part-time courses longer. Many would have started in May and June – so far relatively few have completed a course.

Since the start of the Russian war of aggression at the end of February, more than a million war refugees from Ukraine have come to Germany, at least temporarily – around 35 percent of them are children and young people under the age of 18, most of them of primary school age.