Hamburg parliament orders preparations for Ukrainian Abitur exams

Hamburg's parliament instructed the city senate on October 14 to prepare to introduce Ukrainian as an Abitur examination subject, DPA reported.

The initiative came from the Social Democratic and Green parliamentary groups. They said around 5,500 children and teenagers whose first language is Ukrainian attended Hamburg schools in the 2024/2025 academic year.

The senate is to develop and implement a curriculum and ensure enough qualified teachers are available. They would provide continuous instruction at upper secondary level and prepare examination tasks.

Nine schools in the city already offer a total of 19 Ukrainian courses, according to DPA. Ukrainian cannot currently be chosen as an Abitur examination subject, unlike Russian, Turkish, Arabic and Chinese.

The senate was also instructed to seek recognition of Ukrainian as an examination subject at the national level. This requires agreement at the conference of education ministers representing Germany's states.