The pupils were actually supposed to prepare a presentation about their hobby. "But my hobby is reading - and that's a bit boring," Amina explains in German and smiles. Then she stands up, places her sheets of paper on the projector and says quietly: "Welcome to my presentation about Ukraine."

Ten minutes and many Wikipedia facts later, the other students from the German as a Second Language (DAZ) course are allowed to assess the 14-year-old. Amir raises his hand: "Very, very good. I've never done a presentation like this before," he says, looking almost a little intimidated. Amir came to Switzerland from Iran two and a half years ago. Amina smiles sheepishly. She fled here from Ukraine just under a year ago.

She was a very good student in her old home country. "I'm really happy that Amina is here now, she's motivated and gets going - that's how she pulls the others along," says Kathrin Aschwanden, teacher for DAZ.

For a few weeks now, Amina has been attending the mainstream school in Grosswangen LU together with Amir and six other children in the asylum process. Prior to this, she was taught for months at the Hirschpark asylum centre in Lucerne together with other refugee children (we reported from the asylum school). So learning German with people from all over the world is nothing new for Amina. What is new is that she is now being taught with Swiss pupils in all other lessons. Amina attends 1a ISS - so she is an integration pupil. Her handicap, if you want to call it that, is the language.

The integration students are reassessed every six months, which means that their level can still change. "Amina is lucky that she starts in year 7. She still has time to reach her actual level in year 9 before the transition to secondary school takes place," explains headmaster Urs Camenzind. Refugees who are already older when they arrive at school either have to be downgraded a few grades or have a much harder time realising their full potential.

Just how strange it is to be taught with younger classmates can be seen in Amina's French lessons. Here, the 14-year-old towers over all the 10- and 11-year-olds - and especially her neighbour with the freckles and childlike face. Nevertheless, her learning partner sets the tone and motivates Amina with enthusiasm: "Look, you have to write it like this," she says. And: "Have you got your exercise book with you? We can do page 17 now."

It's the first lesson in which Amina doesn't really seem motivated. Perhaps it's because French is the fifth language Amina has learnt in her young life. After Ukrainian, Russian, English and German. But maybe it's also because she feels like a foreign body among the younger children. When asked about it, she takes it with humour: "It's just funny sometimes that I have to look down at the others like that," she says and laughs quietly. But the much younger classmates have one advantage. "The girls are all really nice and curious and look after Amina," reports the French teacher. And the boys? "Not so much - but that's not because of Amina. Boys think girls this age are stupid anyway."

Amina arrives at a foreign school in the middle of the school year. The 14-year-old girls, with whom she is taught many subjects, have all formed their own cliques and define themselves through their friendships. Even if there were no language and cultural differences, "the new girl" would have a hard time here.

After the first few weeks, during which Amina tended to be on her own, the teachers sought dialogue with the other teenage girls. However, they felt attacked and misunderstood. "We didn't do anything," they said. That was true. Nobody had actively marginalised anyone. But: "You can tell by the little things whether someone is integrated," says sports teacher Caro Emmenegger. If the girls run around and play tag, everything is fine. But when they line up for the high jump, for example, it's noticeable that some are laughing and talking and others are just standing around quietly on their own.

The teachers and school management in Grosswangen give a lot of thought to the topic of integration. In the remedial class that Amina attends on Monday mornings immediately after German as a second language, the teacher even seems to have designed the German exercises to get the girls talking to each other. The pupils are asked to form sentences in different tenses. "As a child I ", "I used to ", "Now I do ", "Later I will " Amina and her neighbour finish the exercise in no time: "As a child I slept a lot", "Now I do a lot of homework", "Later I will I don't know yet." Although they have inserted the correct verb forms, they have learnt virtually nothing about each other. Now they sit next to each other in silence and look ahead. "Mrs Marberger, what should we do now?" "Yes, are you finished yet? It's okay to form several sentences! You should just talk to each other. Why don't you ask her what it was like in Ukraine?" motivates the teacher.

Amina's classmate dutifully obeys. She learns that Amina's school was very big. Then both pupils sit quietly next to each other again. "Where do you live?" Amina's classmate asks in the silence. She gives the address. Silence again. Then Amina dares to make an attempt herself: "What did you do on your birthday?" she asks, and now she finally manages a few sentences that sound like a conversation. But it's exhausting. It's a lesson.

To make matters worse, the children on the playground don't speak the language Amina is learning in German lessons, but their own dialect. So it's no wonder that Amina often wears headphones during the break.

Headteacher Urs Camenzind doesn't want to sugarcoat the difficulties: "It's not easy for children from refugee families to make friends in these times," he says. Several difficulties come together: "The language barrier, cultural differences, but also a certain basic scepticism towards foreigners." The resistance to refugees that prevails in Germany can also be felt here - and this is naturally passed on to the children.

This problem is nothing new in itself, "but the requirement has changed - in other words, that schools should achieve integration into society". Camenzind also emphasises group dynamics, which are normal for young people of that age. And: "The child's personality also plays a role, of course. We find Amina to be rather reserved."

But apparently it wasn't always the case. Over lunch at home, Amina's mother tells her how grateful she is that they now have a flat and, above all, that Amina is attending a proper school and getting a good education. Education plays a major role in Amina's family - almost all of her relatives are lawyers or doctors. Amina's sister is studying law in Ukraine, and the family would like Amina to study medicine one day. However, she herself is not enthusiastic about the idea and does not yet know exactly what she wants to do.

After Amina's home town of Donetsk was taken by the Russians, who also destroyed the family home, she and her mother fled within Ukraine for the time being. "But if you come from Donetsk, you're not welcome anywhere - our car was scratched in other cities and I couldn't find a job," her mother recalls. When the opportunity arose to move to the West with a bus full of refugees, Amina's mother seized it. Today, she is proud that her daughter learnt German so quickly. There's just one thing that worries her: "I think she's having a hard time at school. Amina used to bring friends with her much more often and approach others. Now she's so withdrawn."

Amina herself obviously can't understand the worries of all the people around her. No matter who asks her - her teachers, her mother, the journalist - she repeatedly emphasises that she feels good at school, that she is doing well. Nevertheless, she doesn't want to stay in Switzerland after school. Asian countries fascinate her. "I need over 100,000 dollars to go there," she says, and for the first time she laughs openly. "Do you know how to get a holiday job?

Around 8,000 children and young people applied for asylum in Switzerland in 2015, of which around 2,000 came here without their parents as so-called UMAS (unaccompanied minor asylum seekers). Children of school age may and must attend school in Switzerland even during their asylum procedure. Smaller municipalities in particular sometimes send asylum-seeking children to normal school classes right from the start. In municipalities with more asylum-seeking children, there are often reception classes. The refugee children attend these until they have reached the level of a regular class. In some cantons - for example Lucerne - there are also schools within the asylum centres that prepare refugee children for normal classes until they are allocated to the individual municipalities. Other cantons, such as Geneva, have mixed solutions: Here, the children are taught in special classes in the morning and with the other pupils in the afternoon. Particular attention is paid to asylum seekers who are older than 16 and those who have come to Switzerland as UMAs. Many cantons have special bridging programmes and integration classes for them. The Swiss Federation of Teachers (LCH) points out that the integration of refugee children can only succeed if no further savings are made in education and additional funds are released for this integration.