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Danish schools welcome thousands of refugee students

As students across Denmark return to school this week, many will be joined by new classmates who can’t yet speak Danish.

Published: 8 August 2016 10:28 CEST

Danish schools welcome thousands of refugee students

Students make their way to Vesterbro Ny Skole on Monday as Danish schools reopen for the new year. Photo: Jens Astrup/Scanpix 2016)

In at least 23 municipalities, officials plan to place refugee children directly into the public school system even if they haven’t yet mastered the local language.

Broadcaster TV2 surveyed officials in Denmark’s 98 municipalities on their plans to educate refugee children. Of the 75 municipalities that responded, 23 of them said that refugee kids would be placed in normal classes rather than special introductory courses that have been offered in the past. A number of additional municipalities said that they are considering following course.

In most instances the school officials said that special language training and other initiatives would be available to the refugee children, but that hasn’t stopped the Danish Union of Teachers (Danmarks Lærerforening) from criticizing the plans.

“Under all circumstances, this will mean that a student who doesn’t speak Danish will require something extra and that will naturally take away from the other students,” the union’s deputy chair, Dorte Lange, told TV2.

Although his municipality told TV2 it would not be placing refugee children in normal classes this year, Aalborg Mayor Thomas Kastrup-Larsen said that mixing refugees with other Danish children as soon as possible is a wise strategic move.

“It is an investment that is made based on what will provide the best integration and the best school, while also proving to tbe the most effective in the long run,” he said.

Local Government Denmark (Kommunernes Landsforening), an interest group for all of Denmark's 98 municipalities, said that around 6,000 refugee children will enter the public school system this year.

Denmark suspends asylum centre talks with Rwanda

The Scandinavian country’s plans, first announced by the previous Social Democratic government, called for people seeking asylum in Denmark to be transferred to reception centres outside the European Union while their requests were processed.

A law adopted in June 2021 did not specify which country would host the centre, but said asylum seekers should stay there even after they were granted refugee status.

Discussions were launched with Rwanda and other countries, but they have now been suspended since the installation of a new Danish left-right government in December headed by the Social Democrats.

“We are not holding any negotiations at the moment about the establishment of a Danish reception centre in Rwanda”, Migration and Integration Minister Kaare Dybvad told daily Altinget.

“This is a new government. We still have the same ambition, but we have a different process”, he added. “The new government’s programme calls for the establishment of a reception centre outside Europe “in cooperation with the EU or a number of other countries”.

The change is an about-face for the Social Democrats, which had until now rejected any European collaboration, judging it slow and thorny.

“While the wider approach also makes sense to us, [Denmark’s change of heart] is precisely because there has been movement on the issue among many European countries”, Dybvad said. “There are many now pushing for a stricter asylum policy in Europe”, he said.

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Inger Støjberg, leader of the Denmark Democrats said on Facebook that she was “honestly disgusted” by the government’s decision to delay plans for a reception centre in Rwanda, pointing out that Kaare Dybvad had said during the election campaign that a deal would be done with Rwanda within a year.

“Call us old-fashioned, but we say the same thing both before and after an election. We stand firm on a strict immigration policy. The Social Democrats, Liberals and Moderates clearly do not,” she said.

Lars Boje Mathiesen from the New Right Party accused the government of perpetrating a “deadly fraud” on the Danish people.

“It is said in Christiansborg that it is paused. But we all know what that means,” he wrote on Facebook, accusing Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen of “empty words” in the run-up to the election.

In the face of this reaction, Dybvad told the Ritzau newswire that although talks with Rwanda were not happening at present, the government had not given up on a deal with the African nation. He also said that he was confident that asylum reception centres outside of the EU would be a reality within five years.

EU interior ministers are meeting in Stockholm this week to discuss asylum reform. Those talks are expected to focus on how to speed up the process of returning undocumented migrants to their country of origin in cases where their asylum bid fails.

Denmark’s immigration policy has been influenced by the far-right for more than 20 years. Even Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, the head of the Social Democrats, has pursued a “zero refugee” policy since coming to power in 2019.

Copenhagen has over the years implemented a slew of initiatives to discourage migrants and made Danish citizenship harder to obtain. In 2020, it became the only country in Europe to withdraw residency permits from Syrians from Damascus, judging that the situation there was now safe enough for them to return.

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