Eurolang 07.04.2004

Council of Europe asks Saxon government to reconsider its position on Sorbian schools

Copenhagen 4/7/2004, by Brigitte Alfter

The Council of Europe (CoE) has asked the government of the Province of Saxony to reconsider its position on Sorbian schools. Last summer the school of Crostwitz, a traditional Sorbian school, was closed, because there were too few students.

Other schools are equally threatened, and according to an Opinion by the Council of Europe, the number of Sorbian schools has already been reduced from twelve to six. The reason being that the Province of Saxony applies school legislation, which requires a certain amount of students per class and per school in order to keep the class or school going.

“For language-defined minorities like the Sorbians, it is necessary for the state to apply other quotas than for German schools,” says Rainer Hofmann, chairperson of the Council of Europe advisory committee, to Eurolang.

Mr Hofmann attended the recent conference on Sorbian education, along with the federal German commissioner for minority issues, Jochen Welt. In recent reports, the advisory committee paid attention to the school of Crostwitz and the question of student quotas.

“The Advisory Committee considers that the minimum requirement of 20 pupils to run a class offering minority language teaching is very high considering Article 14 of the Framework Convention,” states the CoE Opinion. “And then the committee did not even know that Crostwitz was the only Sorbian secondary school which was not mixed,” Hofmann says to Eurolang.

The children have been moved to nearby schools, which are mixed German-Sorbian schools, it means that the everyday language among the children tends to be German.

The ministry of education has rejected the demand of the Council of Europe. “In practice all Sorbian primary schools are kept going with at least seven students,” says Dieter Herz, spokesperson of the Saxonian ministry responsible for education. This happens even though the minimum for keeping a primary school open is 15 students, the minimum for secondary schools is 40 students, according to Herz.

However, the school in Crostwitz was run for years with classes less than 20, sometimes with less than ten students, he tells Eurolang. “We have told this to the Council of Europe Advisory Committee several times,” he says.

The aim of education there, apart from teaching Sorbian language and culture, is also to prepare the children for a professional life in Germany and Europe, and to provide ideal surroundings for their education. This consideration has also been taken into account, he says.

But the Province of Saxony is not only criticised for its closure of the Crostwitz school. Rainer Hofmann also criticised the fact that the province was represented by a regional school director.

Also, during a previous meeting in Berlin last June, the ministry dealing with education was “not really represented” either, Hofmann says. “The following day the closure of the school of Crostwitz was announced. This is an affront against the institutions of Berlin and Strasbourg. And towards the Sorbians it is a way of showing that this question is not considered to be terribly important,” says Hofmann.

However, the minister was not able to attend because he had to chair a meeting with the parliament of the province in his function as the deputy prime minister of the province, his spokesperson says to Eurolang. “Of course Minister Mannsfeld is available, both in the past and in the future, for discussions with the federal representatives, as well as those from the Council of Europe on the question of schools in the settlement area of the Sorbian people, provided that meetings fit into the schedule,” says Herz.

Germany has signed the European Framework Convention on National Minorities, and both federal and provincial authorities are thus obliged to comply with it. However, due to the German federal system, the federal commissioner for minorities has no influence on the question of education because the German provinces only are responsible for this.

During the Sorbian conference on education, Rainer Hofmann made another suggestion, namely that the federal authorities should provide support to those provinces where minorities live. “It is a special task to finance minority schools. Provinces along the coastline also need special support in order to safeguard the coast,” he says.

However, the federal authorities recently cut back funding on the Sorbian Minority and it seems that extra funding from Berlin is unlikely.

Members of national minorities can take government decisions to court. Currently such a procedure has been initiated by parents who had children at the Crostwitz school. Such a case usually takes several years, but ultimately it could be decided upon by the European Court of Human Rights. (Eurolang)