Russian-Speaking Families and Public Preschools in Luxembourg: Cultural Encounters, Challenges, and Possibilities

Luxembourgish Educational System

The residents that opt for public education have almost no choice but to embrace the institutional multilingual mode. The educational system of Luxembourg is one of the best funded in the world (OECD 2022), including expenditures per student and the teachers’ salaries. Public schooling in Luxembourg is also one of the most complex mechanisms because of its multiple levels, early orientation, and the use of three languages. Overall, the Luxembourgish educational system is ranked below average by several consequent Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) evaluations (OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment, OECD 3); it also has one of the biggest numbers of school dropouts. According to the same study, the disadvantage of newcomers in school performance in Luxembourg is the highest in PISA measurements within 79 countries.

Trilingualism in education means sufficient proficiency in Luxembourgish, French, and German by the time of graduation. The complex system begins with Luxembourgish instruction in pre-school (“précoce” and “Spillschoul”). In the primary (primaire) school, instruction switches over to German, and French is added as a foreign language at this stage. In the secondary (secondaire) school, instruction is mostly in French, yet good command of German is required. Thus, the main distinction of the Luxembourgish educational system is that all the three languages are not separate subjects, but proficiency in them serves as a tool for doing well socially (Luxembourgish), academically (most of the subjects are taught in German in the primary school), and advancing well to secondary school (French is the language for many subjects).

In this context, the earlier the child joins school, the deeper is their linguistic immersion. At the same time, home languages play a vital role in the child’s development. The local public school system has been created with the expectation that children enter preschool with Luxembourgish, and graduate with four developed languages – Luxembourgish, French, German, and (most commonly) English as a “foreign” language (Weber 37, 38), but it is not the case for most students anymore. With the number and diversity of both the local and foreign-born residents, discussed earlier, it is clear that not all of them have been similarly exposed to or even have any knowledge of the three obligatory languages that are spread across all the stages of the educational system.

Spillschoul, or “play school,” the stage this study focuses on, is presented as a tool of social cohesion, and a steppingstone to entering the state system (MENJE 35). Obligatory from the age of 4, the two years children spend there are supposed to prepare them for the “real,” i.e., the primary school, and develop concentration, fine motor, and social interaction skills. One of the main aims is to make the children acquainted with the Luxembourgish language. The presence of Luxembourgish as the first spoken language has been constantly dropping in the past decades (MENJE): 54.5% of preschool students spoke it as their first language in 2005/2006, and a decade later, their number diminished to 35.1%. Among those students who do not speak Luxembourgish at home, the following languages prevailed: 45.3% students speak Portuguese, 18.2% French, 3.5% Arabic, 3.2% Italian, 3.0% English, 2.5% German, 2.3% Serbian, 2.0% Spanish, and 20.0% another language.

Russian is definitely in the last group, but it has not been singled out yet. As most of the transplants are from neither a German-speaking nor a francophone background, the Russian speakers usually do not have the advantage of school language exposure before starting school and during the studies. Parents still find clubs in Russian for young children – for the comfort of their children, a better level of involvement in sports (a private swimming coach, not a group class for younger children is preferred), or because they want the children to participate in activities that are mostly taught by Russian speakers (gymnastics, ice skating, etc.). Often the first club the children went to were Russian language clubs. In Luxembourg, there is no official education system that caters to Russian-speaking families (except for several Sunday schools). They have to adjust and choose a school according to their current situation and value systems among the existing options.

Russian Speakers and Their Educational Aspirations

According to some estimates, the number of Russian speakers in Europe could reach six million people: Ryazantsev (159) compares it to the total “number of people living in the territory of Denmark, Finland, or Slovakia” (ibid).^[2] Among the former Soviet Republics, it is the Russian Federation and Ukraine that have the most numerous communities abroad, and the numbers keep growing. According to the findings of Eurostat on migrant population statistics, the citizens of the two countries have been in the top ten of non-EU arrivals, as well as permanent residency permit holders and new citizens in 2021 (18,200 Ukrainians, 17,300 Russians, Eurostat). The biggest share of these communities in EU reside in Germany (Ryazantsev 158, gives the number of three million Russian speakers), but Luxembourg is also listed as a popular destination, with quite modest – according to the size of the country – numbers, and a different proportion of Russians and Ukrainians (STATEC 2021). Nevertheless, the upward trend is the same; the number of Ukrainian residents had grown from 427 in 2010 to 980 in 2020; as for the Russian population, it had also nearly doubled: the numbers were 930 in 2010 and 1,857 in 2020.

The Welcome to Luxembourg portal, the homepage of the Russian-speaking community (wel2lux.com), claims that the number of Russian speakers residing in Luxembourg exceeds 5,000. According to STATEC, the number of potential Russian speakers as of 01.01.2021 is 3,803 people. Some of the 2,594 citizens of Baltic states (674 from Estonia, 753 from Latvia, and 1,167 from Lithuania) could be added to this group. Exact numbers of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers are hard to estimate for several reasons. The itineraries, or patterns of migration (through other countries, and thus with a different passport) and their timeframes and statuses (some people have been in Luxembourg long enough to have obtained local citizenship), have been increasingly diverse in the past two decades. Each year, the number of people from a post-Soviet origin applying for Luxembourgish nationality is growing too. Only in 2019, 95 citizens of the Russian Federation acquired Luxembourgish citizenship. From 2009 to 2019, there were 492 naturalised Russian citizens registered by STATEC.

There is an increasing presence of Russian and Russian-speaking children in Luxembourg public schools, which can be observed throughout all the cycles (Tables 1 and 2). The Ministry of Education data from 2019/2020 school year show that there are 539 students of this background. The bigger number in primary school, including preschool, is an indication of the future growth of this school population.

The idea of repeating a year, so familiar in Luxembourg (32.2% of 15-year olds had this experience, according to PISA, 2018), is not the case in Russia (1.5% of repeaters for the same age group, ibid.). Both the parents and the students perceive this measure as a stigma, and the parents want to know what could be done to avoid it. In the years recorded, from 2005 to 2019, there were 11 Russian-speaking repeaters in Spillschoul (preschool), 24 in primary, and 137 in secondary. Another fear of Russian-speaking parents is the early separation into classical and general educational streams, as well as vocational training. In the Russian school, students often stay with the same group throughout their school years, separating for further academic or vocational studies only at the age of 16. In the Luxembourg secondary school, the division is as follows: out of 44,705 high-school students,

• 14,722 attend classical high school;

• 29,163 are in the general stream; and

• 813 are receiving Brevet de Technicien Supérieur (BTS) (higher technical certificate).

For the Russian and Russian-speaking population, the ratio is nearly half as low as follows:

• 122 children go to the general stream;

• 123 joined the classical track; and

• 4 work on their BTS (Charts 1 and 2).

Chart 1

Secondary school allotment, all students.

Chart 2

Secondary school allotment, Russian-speaking students.

This is quite a successful performance for a foreign demographic. Moreover, the school journey is oriented towards tertiary education: 62.1% of Russians aged 25–34 have a university degree while in OECD the average is 47,1% (OECD). Most parents see matriculation as an obligatory part of the educational journey of their children, and not enrolling into a university is perceived as a failure.

When migrant children enter the educational system, their parents lack the cultural capital of the old-timers needed for helping children navigate successfully; moreover, they have different expectations of what the system should give. Adults tend to compare school administration, curricula, everyday routines, and school customs to their own educational experience and many things puzzle or alarm them. They can find some brief information on the website of the Ministry of Education, on several English-language support pages for expats, e.g. www.justarrived.lu and on the Russian-language site www.welcome2lux. However, these sources are not sufficient to provide outsiders with a deep understanding of the system, its values, and challenges. The cultural capital needed to successfully navigate social life, educational system in particular, is usually acquired “over time by taking part in the system” (Yohani 86).

In the late 1990s, Tudge, an expert in Human Development and Family Studies, did fieldwork for his project “The everyday life of young children” observing 3-year olds around the world and in Russia. He reported that after the collapse of the Soviet Union “people had to find a way to help their children successfully negotiate a very different landscape” (Tudge 120, 272). From the findings, Russian children seem to be in a very homely surrounding before they start primary school. They take long naps, usually until at least the age of 6, go to bed late, and spend a lot of time outside. It is quite common for Russian children to spend their days with grandparents and other family members, and not in an institution. Tudge also noticed a variety of extracurricular activities available for the children of this age in Obninsk, 100 km away from Moscow, and in Tartu, Estonia (an ex-Soviet republic), compared to other countries studied in the framework of the project. He hypothesises that the parents desire “to equip their children with the skills they might need to succeed in uncertain times” (ibid., p. 272).

It is important to emphasise that education is obligatory in Russia (and other former Soviet republics) only from the age of 7. Thus, not all young children are enrolled into educational institutions. Child education takes place in private classes or with private child minders and family members in a more homely atmosphere and often in an academically oriented way. There is a huge selection of affordable private early development classes, even in smaller cities, conducted on a high professional level, including sports, arts, and introduction to reading and math. Requests for advice regarding good “paзвивaшки,” or early child development programmes, are definitely among the most frequently discussed topics in Russian speakers’ social networks in Luxembourg too.

The Sociolinguistic Environment of the Families

Before migrating, one of the things that the future residents find out is that Luxembourg is a multilingual country. However, the extent and the omnipresence of the diversity are impossible to imagine from a distance. Most participants admit that they were not prepared for such a diversity, and the fact that they now have to juggle with at least three languages is overwhelming both emotionally and intellectually. Alina feels as if she were “dumped into a life with so many languages”:

I think, we weren’t yet ready for that number of languages. When we found out, we were actually a little upset, because it’s really a lot. But it is hard to say if it is a disadvantage or an advantage.

The understanding of practical language relevance and their application is a vital part of settling down in the Grand Duchy. While English is seen as the language used for work and communication in the expat circles, French is distinguished as the lingua franca of Luxembourg. Before the beginning of preschool for the children, no participant had had any contact with Luxembourgish. None of them were even aware of its existence prior to the decision to move to Luxembourg. Yet it is the language the children have to acquire for everyday interactions in school. The parents also need it, but later and in a different way. After 5 years of residency and a successful language exam, the Luxembourgish nationality can be acquired. For the group I have interviewed, the intention to stay is so obvious that the phrase “we are learning Luxembourgish” sounds synonymous to “we are applying for the Luxembourgish passport.” The role of the titular language thus is ambiguous: the children need it for daily interaction, while the parents need it to get citizenship.

The number of languages used in the different fields of Luxembourgish life is intimidating for the newcomers brought up in a monolingual environment, who often turn to the comfort zone of their native language plus English. Fluency in English and some basic French (the actual linguistic profile of all of the participants) enables one to get around but will still set a limit on the amount and scale of interaction in the new country. One of the first items on the to-do list of a recent transplant to Luxembourg is signing up for language classes. The data provided by Institut national des langues (inll.lu/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/statinl_siteweb_2019.pdf) show Russian students being in the top ten of other nationals registered for classes in German (ninth position), French (tenth) and Luxembourgish (sixth). They do not appear among the top ten national groups applying to study English.

Kira’s linguistic journey describes the general trajectory of Russian speakers trying to conquer Luxembourgish multilingualism.

Kira: Both my husband and I, we studied English in school and at the University and after the University. And when we moved here, it became obvious that just English is not enough. And we started learning French. And we are carrying on with it, and next term we will start learning Luxembourgish.

All participants mention the crucial role of Russian in their everyday lives. Most of their friends in Luxembourg speak Russian. For adults, and especially for non-working adults, the “building” of a new life in a new place seems to be happening in the Russian community. For example, all participants came across other Russian-speaking families in the parks and playgrounds where they brought their children. Since Luxembourg is a small country, the routes for family entertainment are relatively few and easy to determine. Traditionally, taking the children outside for fresh air is a very important part of upbringing in post-Soviet countries. Since four out of five children did not attend nurseries, and the mothers were not employed, they spent a lot of time on the playgrounds. There, the home-raised children who only spoke Russian and their mothers, who felt more comfortable speaking with their native language, made connections – by chance or on purpose – with other Russian speakers, thus allowing for parallel relations between the adults and the children. Four out of five participants remarked that they had made acquaintances with other Russian families in one of the Luxembourg City parks, and they have maintained these friendships to this day.

School Choice: Where Will We Go with Our Child Who Is a Confident Speaker of Luxembourgish?

The future and the education of the children are often crucial considerations for migrating families, and choosing a school is one of the major steps of the new country exploration. For all the participants, otherwise living in Russian and English-speaking bubbles, the Luxembourgish school system is the first encounter with the Luxembourgish language. In this context, it is presented as a significant part of becoming Luxembourgish citizens, which is the goal of all of the respondents. School choice is a decision based on trust, and going local is often a consequence of the overall trust towards the state and the system.

On the one hand, the parents in this research had a very positive initial attitude towards the local schools. It is well known that the schools in Luxembourg have a substantial budget, are free of charge, and are located in the neighbourhood, helping the children to integrate in the local community. My interviewees see trilingual instruction as the primary benefit of the local school system since it allows for the natural and easy acquisition of the languages. For the parents who grew up in the early post-Soviet period, a language immersion and the possibility of studying languages in a hands-on way seem unique:

Inna: I think now the children have more possibilities than their parents had. Because the world has changed a bit, in the sense that knowing a foreign language is the norm. In school, for us, it was a virtual reality, and here it is around you in everyday life, and it is normal for Luxembourgers to know several languages. And the earlier you start, the better. I think, in our age, it is harder for us.

Among the interviewed parents, the view that children soak up languages “like a sponge” was quite common. Another widespread notion is that schools in Luxembourg have all the necessary resources and experience to accept and integrate foreign children:

Kira: Their system is extremely well adapted to children exactly like ours: those who come to school without understanding a single word in this language <Luxembourgish, DK>, because there are many children like this, the level of migration is high here, people come and go on a regular basis, and we actually had this trust <in the school> that they know better.

A new language is seen by both the teachers and the parents as the biggest challenge for the children. Moreover, a new school also brings a completely new environment. This was a major concern for all the families, including the mothers of the children who had attended crèches in other languages of instruction. The experience of this group has shown that the children’s previous knowledge and exposure to other languages as well as the participation in obligatory plurilingual education^[3] have played their role in easier adaptation from the beginning:

Inna: I was worried that she <my daughter, DK> would have issues with the language <after three years in a French crèche>, but her teacher, in the beginning, she spoke French and Luxembourgish to her, and they did the same thing in the Maison Relais <the after-school programme>.

Unfortunately, the Russian language does not seem to expand the contact zone in the local school – except with the children speaking the same or another Slavic language. In general, it is not familiar to teachers not only as a language from a different family but also as a phenomenon. Thus, the multilingual identity of children is not formed in school on the basis of their repertoire (Kirsch 2).

There are other sides to the unfamiliarity of this demographic. Darina’s daughter, Elvira, started précoce (first non-obligatory school cycle, from the age of three) after 3 years at home, and found herself in a Russian bubble in the local school, too. Darina and her husband think that this hampered Elvira’s progress in Luxembourgish. They believe that the management could not have foreseen that children of different nationalities would form a closed group of friends. They also think that once it was discovered, the school should have taken some measures:

Darina: In our case, the children had different passports — Latvia, Luxembourg, and Russia, but the children spoke Russian, it was their mother-tongue. So, these children communicate so well <among them, DK>, and we are still friends, and we often see each other, and it is great. But if the goal of this structure is to help the child speak Luxembourgish, when they find out this information, these children had to be separated, however painful that might be. But it would make their future life easier.

According to the parents, the school languages constitute the biggest challenge for their children’s success in knowledge acquisition. The parents had doubts about the value of learning Luxembourgish, a language that is only spoken within the country and not even by all the residents. Three out of five parents had been considering enrolling their children in an international school with English as the language of instruction, or in one of the French schools. Their children were not accepted, and no explanation was given. So, parents send their children to the local school torn by uncertainties and mixed feelings.

School Realities: I Think That This Is My Daughter’s Native Environment

Finding themselves within a new system, the parents discover and evaluate its main traits and actors. Quite soon, the parents come to appreciate the individual approach to children on the part of the teachers. While there are complaints about linguistic misunderstandings in expat group communication with the school staff on social networks, my interviewees did not report similar issues. Conversely, three of the five parents said that their children’s teachers went out of their way to speak English to them, and to translate the school newsletters and other official announcements, most commonly published in French and Luxembourgish.

Mila: Even if she wrote in French, we would understand, but I like the fact that she is taking into account my level of proficiency and my language skills, and it is nice… The letters from school come in French, but they are clear. And I know that if I haven’t understood anything, I could always write to the teacher in English, and she would respond.

The parents feel that the teachers do not ignore them when they get responses to their questions. The children’s actual level of understanding is harder to assess. Language teaching pedagogies have recently made significant advances in working out effective integration methods for the Romance and Germanic language speakers. There are studies of the use of translanguaging by the child-minders who mix Romance languages, French, Portuguese, or Italian with English, depending on the child’s background. This approach allows the children to use words from all of their language repertoire (e.g. Kirsch 2). Such methods cannot be expected to be used with every member of the superdiverse classroom of Luxembourg on a daily basis. My interviewees showed understanding of the challenges confronting the school; they do not expect any special treatment of every child:

Darina: There is no way the school can take everyone into account; can you imagine, how many nationalities there are here… One needs to wear a scarf, another one only wants to eat potatoes, and for the third one it is five o’clock tea… How can this be, it is impossible, they need to adapt to the general conditions.

The fixed rules of conduct within the system, very often criticised as excessive in online communities, are not seen as very limiting by the respondents. Unlike in Russia, where you can take a child out of preschool without an explanation, in Luxembourg all absence must be excused, and the holidays need to be taken according to the school calendar, not the parents’ availability. Viewed with suspicion and initially perceived as a limitation, the fixed schedule is actually found by most participants to help them adapt to the rhythm of Luxembourg:

Kira: I even prefer it this way when you have this fundamental timeframe which shows you what is always a yes, and what is a no.

Adjusting to systematic rules that are respected and observed gives a feeling of security and stability, something not quite familiar to the people with a Soviet or a post-Soviet background, especially when dealing with public institutions. In migration studies, security and stability are often cited among the main reasons for people to leave Russia and other countries in transit (together with better economic opportunities). This factor comes together with the search for political stability and freedom.

One thing that was highlighted by all the participants is the non-transparency of the system. While the daily routine is communicated in detail (e.g., what and when to bring to the swimming pool), the bigger issues such as the curriculum, the day structure, or the major calendar events are not discussed with or announced to the families. These details of school life are considered to be common knowledge, but for migrant parents they are not. The one-to-one parent–teacher meetings reveal the content of work and the issues the child is having only at the end of the trimester. For the parents who grew up with collectivist mentality, this approach is unusual. Moreover, two of the five participants found the level of the curriculum “lacking,” as the focus is rather on the soft skills (introduction to socialising without reading or writing and very basic math seemed too “primitive” for school and 5-year olds) than on technical knowledge.

Parents have cited numerous cases of intercultural misunderstandings, with a mother showing up for the Father’s Day celebration; another one offering a 100-euro gift card to a teacher when the child was leaving the school; one girl’s mother getting on the school bus for children and being perplexed why the driver stared at her with astonishment. None of these anecdotes, however, left an unpleasant aftertaste but are viewed as lessons learned. A bigger challenge for the adults is the self-assessment of the children’s proficiency in Luxembourgish and finding teaching resources for autonomous learning. There is hardly any material online, and it is difficult for the parents finding and making sense of information provided in Luxembourgish, if they want to help the child with learning a song or understanding a tradition. Two families received gifts from schools, one a CD, and the other a DVD. However, all family members do everything on the computer and do not own either a DVD or a CD player at home. There are no manuals with texts for children 4–6-year old, as they will only start reading and writing at the next stage, in the primary school, and it is in German that they acquire literacy.

Future Expectations: Next Year, They Will Switch to German. This Is Scary! Evaluation and Re-evaluation of the Linguistic Repertoires and Needs

As time passes and experience of interaction with the school is accumulated, some of the parents become more self-confident. While in the early stages of life in the new country the opinions were primarily shaped on the basis of friends’ recommendations and later on teachers’ reviews, once the system and the child’s response to it become clear, there are more calls for judgement.

Darina: <At the meeting with the teacher, DK> they say we don’t have to do it <help children with Luxembourgish>. But in the first two years they used to say the same thing, that we shouldn’t do anything, but as a result I see the difference, I came to trust myself more, as the responsibility for our child is with us, first of all.

Three out of five interviewees mentioned that they do not believe the “bilan” (the detailed trimester performance report) to be an objective representation of their child’s potential school career. However, it is clear that evaluation and re-evaluation of the actors and agency in the field of education are inevitable throughout the journey through the school system. Notably, the positive assessments are not trusted blindly. The parents, seeing or imagining gaps in learning, hire tutors and believe that their children need professional support in order to attain academic success, including receiving the coveted assignment to Lycée classique.

The much-advertised glamorous image of a child picking up at least two European languages almost effortlessly is shaped before the relocation, but it dissipates when reality shows that multilingualism is not easy to achieve. The awe and hopes for the “easy” and natural acquisition of multiple languages unattainable in Soviet and post-Soviet realities often evolve into realization that the mastery of the languages required by Luxembourgish school is a challenge. For the children, just like the adults, the environment defines the language competency. Inna’s daughter had attended a French crèche for 3 years, from one to four. Then, after a year and a half at the Luxembourgish school with hardly any French interaction, her first foreign language seemed to have faded away. So, the parents decided to hire a French tutor to get the language back “before it is completely gone,” even though their initial plan was to hire a tutor in German to prepare the child for a new language of instruction, starting in the first year of primary school. The parents are ready to act preventively, but it is not quite clear to them how to act, as the strategy of sticking to one language is not working. Others consider the load too heavy and the results unclear. Arina is trying to evaluate the potential competency in all the languages used and is worried that her daughter will be stressed out by the fourth language in a row (Russian at home, English at the crèche, Luxembourgish now in Spillshoul, and German added after that). She would prefer her daughter to “speak fewer languages, but more fluently.”

Another sore spot in the school–family interaction was highlighted by all the participants. It is the after-school care, or rather the difficulty in obtaining access to it. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, the school day is divided into two, from 8 am until 12 pm, and from 2 pm until 4 pm. The children not having lunch at the after-school programme need to be brought home and delivered back to school. As mentioned earlier, only one mother, Inna, works full-time, and living outside the busy city districts, where school facilities are often packed to full capacity, had no issues with enrolling her daughter into Maison Relais. The two mothers whose children were not admitted to the after-school care programme make four return journeys from school three days a week. Both say that it turns into their main activity on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays throughout the school year. It is not the laziness of the mothers or the children’s boredom that makes access to after-school programs a nuance: “one should keep in mind the implicitly dual function of childcare: supporting mothers’ employment and child socialisation” (Esping-Andersen 41). The mothers also believe that the access to extra time with schoolmates between classes is of a special value to foreign children, who get more time to practice Luxembourgish.

With the emotional part of making decisions concerning their children’s pre-school education behind them, the participating families are relatively happy with local preschools. Yet, they perceive it just as an intermission: from other parents and social networks they know that the next educational steps will bring more languages and more challenges. Three out of five participants said that they were going to reconsider their school choice after the first years in the primary schools and looking for alternative schooling for their children.