The Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (BMFSFJ) has been promoting language education as part of quality development in child daycare since 2016 with the federal program "Sprach-Kitas: Weil Sprache der Schlüssel zur Welt ist" (Language daycare centres: Because language is the key to the world). Language is the key: it is how we open up the world, come into contact with people and acquire knowledge. Studies have shown that language skills have a significant influence on further education and entry into working life. This is particularly true for children from educationally disadvantaged families and families with a migration background.

The federal "Sprach-Kitas" program is aimed at daycare centres that are attended by an above-average proportion of children with special language support needs. The program combines three main areas of focus: language education integrated into everyday life, inclusive pedagogy and cooperation with families. Since 2021, there has been an additional focus on digital media and the integration of media pedagogical issues into language education. Digital media such as smartphones and tablet computers are now part of everyday life in many families. This makes them part of the language environment of children of all ages. This is why the program takes up digital media in language education, strengthens media education approaches and promotes digital education and exchange formats for the qualification of specialists.

The language daycare centers receive double support in the federal program: The daycare center teams are strengthened by additional specialists with expertise in the field of language education who work directly in the daycare center. They advise, accompany and support the daycare center teams in the further development of language education integrated into everyday life. The program also finances an additional specialist advisor who continuously supports quality development in the language daycare centers. It qualifies the specialists within a network of 10 to 15 language daycare centers.

About every 10th daycare center in Germany is a language daycare center. In North Rhine-Westphalia, around 1,400 daycare centers are supported as "Sprach-Kita". As a result, around 1,400 additional specialists and around 100 specialist advisors have been recruited.

Further information can be found at sprach-kitas.fruehe-chancen.de.