Story highlights Germany has hired teachers to help 196,000 school-age refugees learn to speak German

Angela Merkel's Germany continues to lead the way in welcoming asylum seekers to Europe

(CNN) Germany has recruited 8,500 extra teachers to educate child refugees this year, according to German media.

The teachers have been hired to give special language lessons to the 196,000 asylum seekers of school age who entered Germany in 2015.

"Schools and education administrations have never been confronted with such a challenge," Brunhild Kurth, who heads Germany's education authority, told Die Welt newspaper.

"We must accept that this exceptional situation will become the norm for a long time to come."

Because schools in Germany are organized by federal states, information was collected by the newspaper on a state by state level, rather than nationally.

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