Project Educational Success and Social Participation of Socially and Educationally Disadvantaged Students with Migration Background in Extended Education

This project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, in collaboration of Freie Universität Berlin, Universität Hamburg, and the German Children and Youth Foundation, aims to explore the conditions under which socially and educationally disadvantaged immigrant students in Germany can profit from attending all-day schools, i.e. a form of extended education. Extended education is an umbrella term for offerings extending the regular school day including forms of formal, non-formal, and informal education.

In Germany, high expectations have been tied to the expansion of extended education in form of all-day schools, in particular the strengthening of educational success and social participation of socially and educationally disadvantaged students with a migration background. So far, these expectations have not yet been adequately met in Germany. In other countries, however, there are comparable high-quality offerings of extended education that have been shown to be effective. Therefore, in the project empirical findings and knowledge from other national contexts are to be harnessed so that the potential of all-day schools (especially in primary school) can be better exploited in Germany as well. In this three-year collaborative project, based on an assessment of the current situation in Germany by national and international scientific experts, it is to be determined how effective learning environments in extended education are to be designed by schools and their non-school cooperation partners and which conditions for success are crucial (Phase 1 and 2). In Phase 3, the insights gained are to be discussed in focus groups by German practitioners with a view to transferring them into innovative concepts, measures, and products in the German context, which are going to be tested and evaluated together with practice and transfer partners in Phase 4.

Partners of the collaborative project are Freie Universität Berlin (project coordination), Universität Hamburg, and German Children and Youth Foundation (Deutsche Kinder- und Jugendstiftung, DKJS).