A new report indicates that 55 percent of Berlin police recruits who began training in spring 2025 require extra German language lessons.
The new report from German news outlet Nius indicates that out of 240 police recruits, 132 required extra German-language training, as confirmed by the Berlin police department.
The police also provided a number of reasons for the language struggles of police recruits, including “declining written language skills.” However, the police point to a broader decline across society, including in schools. The police note a “shortage of skilled workers,” and increasing “heterogeneity in classes.”
Notably, Berlin has a very high proportion of recruits from migrant communities, up to 42 percent.
Police say that the first semester of training is the most difficult when it comes to language skills.
“About half of the new recruits require regular language support at the start of their training,” the police statement reads.
However, over time, the amount of assistance drops as recruits progress. It is unclear by how much this share drops over time, as the police did not release any precise statistics in this regard.
Not all recruits move on to be police officers, and the overall number of recruits does not necessarily translate into the final total of police officers.
As Nius notes, potential police officers are supposed to have proof they can speak German at a C2 level by the end of their training, which is checked through an exam. According to the Police Act, applicants can take the exam twice before they are dismissed from service.
The issue goes beyond police officers
The reality is that learning a new language is incredibly hard, and a certain percentage of the millions of migrants coming to Germany will learn only basic German. A certain percentage will become extremely fluent. However, to work in certain fields, such as a police officer, nurse, doctor, or teacher, the standards are expected to be extremely high in theory, but in practice, that is often not the case.
As Remix News previously reported, nearly half of foreign doctors fail their language exam. In Saxony, one of the hardest-hit states, nearly half of all examinees failed the language test in 2023. Among them were 112 out of 200 Syrian doctors and 15 out of 26 Ukrainian candidates. Similar trends were observed nationwide.
Brandenburg also experienced a failure rate of 50 percent, while Bremen, Bavaria, and Berlin had failure rates of 49 percent, 44 percent, and 38 percent, respectively. In Hamburg, failure rates ranged between 40 percent and 45 percent.
In fields where communication is of paramount importance, it appears German authorities are increasingly looking the other way on this key issue.
Teachers themselves say that the standards are being dropped in the German school system to push students through, even when those students do not speak the language sufficiently. Notably, the wave of foreign children, along with children with a migration background, has completely overwhelmed the German education system.
Remix News just ran an account from one teacher in a school where kids with a migration background made up 98 percent of the student population. She describes that it is now the norm that students come to school not speaking even basic German, and sometimes not even a word of German.
However, beyond migration, there are also issues affecting all children, including smartphones, digital distractions, and the rise of AI, which is leading children to rely on digital tools to complete assignments.
