Peer-reviewed article
Schulbegleitung als Instrument inklusiver Schulentwicklung in Deutschland.
Roessner V, Weise V, Voigt A, Rothe J, Nagler T et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This article examines school support assistance (Schulbegleitung) in Germany as a tool for inclusive education. It finds that support services often become a necessary prerequisite for attendance in mainstream schools rather than a bridge to genuine inclusion, because schools lack structural conditions for inclusive practice. The responsibility for educational participation is shifted from schools to individual welfare services, creating coordination problems between education and youth welfare systems. The article argues that psychological distress in students requires stronger professional psychiatric expertise integrated into schools, and calls for better cooperation structures and qualified standards.
Key points
- School support assistance frequently serves as a central requirement for attendance in mainstream schools rather than enabling true inclusion
- Responsibility for educational participation is shifted from institutional school level to individually approved services in the child and youth welfare system
- Coordination and role conflict problems emerge at the interface between education and welfare systems
- For students with psychological distress, school support tasks require professional child and adolescent psychiatric expertise that is often absent
- Sustainable inclusive education requires binding cooperation structures between schools, welfare services, and psychiatric services with clearly defined qualification standards
Limitations
This is a conceptual and structural analysis rather than an empirical study, so it does not provide quantitative evidence about outcomes for students or effectiveness of different support models. It reflects the German education system context and may not be generalizable to other countries.
Abstract
School Support Assistance as an Instrument for Inclusive Schooling in Germany: A Pedagogical and Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Perspective Abstract: This article examines the role of school support assistance in Germany from both a pedagogical and a child and adolescent psychiatric and psychotherapeutic perspective. It analyzes its conditions, potentials, and limitations based on legal and structural-systemic considerations. The findings indicate that school support services too often serve as a central prerequisite for attendance in mainstream schools, as they are frequently deployed when schools are unable to provide the structural conditions for inclusive education. As a result, the responsibility for ensuring educational participation is shifted from the institutional level of the school system to individually approved services within the child and youth welfare system. Coordination and delineation problems emerge at the interface of these two systems. These problems are further intensified by heterogeneous qualification levels and role conflicts and increase the risk of unintended exclusionary effects. Particularly for students experiencing psychological distress, school support assistance often assumes tasks that would require a continuous and professionally grounded integration of child and adolescent psychiatric and psychotherapeutic expertise in school-based support processes. This situation points to the need for a quantitatively and qualitatively stronger presence of relevant professional expertise in everyday school practice as well as for systematically coordinated cooperation with the therapeutic systems involved in treatment. From the perspective of child and adolescent psychiatry and psychotherapy, binding cooperation structures between schools, child and youth welfare services, and child and adolescent psychiatry and psychotherapy as well as clearly defined qualification standards and an increased emphasis on structurally oriented support models must therefore be developed and consistently implemented to secure inclusive education in a sustainable and participation-oriented manner.