The Education and Participation Package (Bildungs- und Teilhabepaket, BuT), a package of cash and in-kind social benefits in Germany, is intended to give children and young people from low-income families fair access to education and social participation. In practice, however, this goal is often not achieved: barriers to access and extensive bureaucracy prevent many eligible families from making use of the support to which they are intitled.
pixel-shot.com (Leonid Yastremskiy)
Improving Germany’s Education and Participation Package (BuT)
Antje
Funcke
Senior Expert
Sarah
Menne
Senior Project Manager
Ruth
Kordtomeikel-Hiller
Project Assistant
Content
15 years of bureaucracy, too little participation
Introduced in 2011, the BuT is designed to support children and young people from families receiving basic income support under SGB II, housing benefit, child supplement, or benefits under the Asylum Seekers Benefits Act, helping them access education and participate in social life.
It includes:
free lunch in early childhood education centers and schools,
a back-to-school starter package,
coverage of costs for school trips,
support for school transport,
additional learning support, and
a monthly subsidy of 15 euros for social and cultural participation.
Despite this important entitlement, the BuT still fails to reach many of those who are eligible. Uptake remains low, although reliable data is still lacking. Responsibilities and procedures are fragmented across different legal frameworks and authorities, while municipal applications and administrative processes vary widely. On top of that, the BuT benefits are not sufficiently grounded in empirical evidence, which means that the benefits often do not reliably reflect the actual needs of children and young people.
Reform of the BuT is urgently needed
We are therefore advocating for a reform of the BuT that makes benefits easier to access, better aligned with actual needs, and more effective in practice. The aim is to significantly reduce non-take-up, create fairer education and participation opportunities across Germany, and ease the burden on public administration through clearer, more consistent, and digitally compatible procedures.
Through a workshop series with experts from municipalities, public administration, startups, and academia, we are developing concrete and practical reform proposals to support policymakers and ministries in making the BuT more effective. We also call for a stronger evidence base, a more needs-based design of benefits, and more effective governance and ongoing development of the BuT.
