Overview
- The Federal Interior Ministry under Alexander Dobrindt has issued an ordinance to make integration exams stricter by barring a test from being graded as passed when any single part is insufficient.
- Officials say investigators found that candidates obtained written test tasks and solutions online and altered answers in the listening/reading section or left the timed writing task blank.
- The rule removes the former option to compensate a weak or missing exam section with stronger results in other parts, a change the ministry frames as improving test security and ensuring real written competence.
- Last year 318,550 people took the integration exam, with 55 percent at B1, 32.2 percent at A2 and 12.8 percent below A2, a scale that the ministry cites to explain the need for tighter safeguards.
- The story was first reported by BILD and confirmed by other outlets, and the ministry says the measure aims to protect the integrity of integration courses and the long‑term ability of migrants to function independently in German society.