Fraud in exams is increasing - Dobrindt wants to significantly tighten German tests for immigrants

Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) wants to tighten German tests for immigrants. A spokesman for the ministry confirmed this on Monday in Berlin. This is intended to prevent increasing fraud in exams.

The corresponding regulation should therefore apply from November 1st. The “Bild” newspaper first reported about it. Participants in the integration courses “illegally acquired the written test tasks and solutions over the Internet” and entered them in the “listening and reading” part of the exam.

In this part of the exam, 45 tasks must be solved by marking the answers. According to “Bild”, another is about writing, where the examinees usually have to write a short message. According to the regulation, “it often occurs that this part is left completely blank.” However, if those tested reach the required B1 level when speaking, the exam is still considered passed due to their good performance in the first part.

Dobrindt wants to overturn this regulation. If a part of the examination has not been completed sufficiently, the examination should no longer be considered passed.

Last year, according to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bamf), 318,550 immigrants took the German test. Of these, 175,193 (55 percent) reached the so-called B1 language level, with which foreigners can communicate in German in everyday life. According to “Bild”, 102,663 (32.2 percent) achieved the lower A2 level and 40,694 (12.8 percent) remained below the A2 level.

The spokesman could not say how many cases people had cheated on the exams.