The following article deals with the issue of immigrant students with little to no knowledge of German who are accepted into the German education system and educated separately. In some schools, these students are integrated into the regular class system. Here, we examine how this integration occurs organizationally and what mechanisms the institution of school has in place to regulate these transitions. The tripartite structure of the German education system is the same in all federal states. However, the states themselves decide on the structure within the education system. Basically, the school system is divided into the primary level, the lower secondary level and the upper secondary level.
In this paper, the focus is on the state of Berlin and, in particular, on how public schools in Berlin deal with newly immigrated students. The study focuses on elementary school, grammar schools and vocational schools. The admission of adolescents who are not German but of a different ethnic origin is not a novelty for the educational system of the western states of the Federal Republic (Castro Varela, 2016; Brüggemann / Nikolai, 2016). At the same time, the practice in schools has remained almost unchanged since the immigration movement in the early 1960' s (Karakayali/ Nieden, 2013).
Therefore, the question is how, after more than 50 years of experience with immigration, the organization school enables newly immigrated children and youth to access education in the school system. This is because there is still a negative correlation between educational success and cultural origin in Germany (von Felden/ Schicke & Schäffter, 2014). Today's practice in schools shows the same measures as more than 50 years ago (Mercator Institute 2015, 2016; Karakayalı 2016, 2017). Research data from this period on the schooling of children and adolescents is not available. Presumably, it was assumed that schooling would be temporary in nature. The schools' current approach is significant because research data on the educational success of immigrant children and adolescents has made clear, at least since PISA, that there is a connection between ethnic origin and educational success (Gomolla/ Radtke, 2009; Hunger/ Thränhardt, 2013).
Schools have official discretion to decide how to deal with new immigrants (cf. Senate Department for Education, Youth and Science, 2012: 3ff.). In Berlin, it is recommended to establish "learning groups for newcomers" (cf. ibid. p.3). In the further course, these learning groups are called "welcome classes".
Regarding the basic theory in the context of immigration of students, Mecheril/ Shure (2015) have commented that school as a socialization instance promotes categorizations within the student the sense of being different is reproduced again by schools. Here a rethinking is demanded, especially with regard to prospective teachers (cf., ibid. p.116 f.). For the primary level, findings on language acquisition are available (Cornely Harboe/Mainzer-Murrenhoff/Heine 2016). Karakayalı et al. (2017); Emmerich et al. (2017) address transition processes in schools and conclude that school structures lack elasticity in the context of migration. Educational participation in schools in the paradigm of inclusion still remains as a precarious issue. In 2015, the Mercator Institute for Language Development as the Center for Teacher Education at the University of Cologne, initiated a study that examined the school inclusion of recent immigrants across Germany. A closer look at the past shows: Welcome classes or foreigner classes or preparatory classes, as they used to be called, have already existed in the Federal Republic of Germany in connection with immigration. These adolescents either arrived with their parents or were born in the Federal Republic. Science has been dealing with the topic of newly immigrated children since 1975 - are there any changes compared to today?

As part of this study, 400 Berlin schools were approached (2016). 16 of these schools agreed to participate in the study, including eight elementary schools, three high schools, and five senior high schools. For the study, a total of 46 interviews were conducted with school administrators, teachers of welcome classes, and teachers of regular school classes. These qualitatively focus on the view of the decision-makers on the design of the transition. The sample consists of eight elementary schools with 24 interviews, five vocational schools with 14 interviews and three high schools with eight interviews. Expert interviews were conducted as an approach. Expert interviewing is discussed in the scientific literature (Meuser/ Nagel, 2005, 2010; Gläser/ Laudel, 2010; Helfferich, 2014) and considered feasible for surveys. In this research context, it is interviews "that are concerned with capturing the interpretation, perspectives, and attitudes of the interviewees themselves (Mayring, 2010: 33)." The contextual knowledge of the interviewed experts as empirical material is the focus of the research interest and the entire analysis. It should result in an empirically relevant scientific concept, a theory about social reality. Within the investigation lies the access to action-guiding knowledge of the actors (Bohnsack et al., 2013, p. 9). This action-guiding knowledge opens access to action practice: here, the question of how transitions are practiced in schools is pursued (cf. ibid., 2013, p. 13). The documentary method aims to provide insight into the knowledge of structures, rules and routines. The interview questions are exploratory (cf. Kleining, 1995: 51) and are directed at an object that is identified as the target of the question and seeks to gain knowledge about this object (cf. ibid.). According to Meuser and Nagel, experts are seen as function bearers of the institutional context of the school. This involves the organizational or institutional context (cf. Meuser and Nagel, 2010, p. 458). This refers to experts who (re)present problem solutions and decision-making structures within the organization of the school (cf. ibid.). The interviews are intended to provide information about the contextual conditions of organizational action. This specification is important because the research question is directed at the action practices of transition design for children and adolescents: How do schools design transitions and what paradigm do they follow in doing so? It is about the shoulds found and the reference to what really happens (cf. Gruschka, 2015, p.43). The investigation is designed as a comparative case study.

Initial results are available for the evaluation of the interviews with the school administrators. First of all, it can be said that there are parallels between the elementary school and the grammar schools. The vocational schools are generally less comparable with the primary schools and the grammar schools in the design of the transitions. In vocational schools, the classes for newcomers who do not have German language skills are called "Welcome-Classes for professional qualification (WK-BQL)". In principle, there is no transition to a regular vocational qualification course. Of the five school administrations interviewed, one stated that it allows students to participate in regular classes as soon as they are admitted. This is justified by short communication channels within the college and the decision that learning the German language is much better done through practical activities. At the high schools, school administrators initially indicate that there are no transitions to regular school classes. This is justified by the class frequency of the regular classes. Further inquiries reveal that there are isolated transitions to regular school classes. The reason for this is that the students are particularly high achievers. The criteria here are the language skills and the commitment shown by the students. The school administrators consider the Gymnasium with the Gymnasiale Oberstufe to be the type of school that requires a high level of linguistic competence. At the elementary schools, newly immigrated students are initially integrated into school subjects such as art, sports and music. The timing of this initial integration into regular school classes varies widely. The criteria for decision-making also receive different responses. What is certain is that the types of schools studied do not use uniform language tests. At the elementary schools, the range is "self-developed tests" and "assessment of language competence by feel."

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