“The number of extraordinary students in Vienna’s primary schools is exploding. According to currently published figures, this increased by 49 percent during Wiederkehr’s term of office from the 2020/21 school year to this year’s 2024/25 school year. While the number of extraordinary students in Vienna’s elementary schools was 10,484 in the 2020/21 school year, this has increased by 5,129 children in the current 2024/25 school year, and thus by 49 percent to 15,613. Wiederkehr’s “fog grenade” with the publication of the much lower June figures a few weeks ago has vanished into thin air and is now obsolete,” said education spokesman Harald Zierfuß.
“However, the question arises as to why “Transparency City Councilor” Wiederkehr hasn’t published these figures long ago? Obviously it always takes the Vienna People’s Party to put numbers on extraordinary students on the table. “Finally, in the upcoming question time in the state parliament on Thursday, the Vienna People’s Party will ask the City Councilor for Education exactly these figures, which he published this evening in a press release,” said Zierfuß. “Rekehr should have put these figures on the table during question time on Thursday at the latest and would no longer have been able to hide them.”
The current figures once again confirm that the majority of these children who cannot speak German when they start school were already born here. The City Councilor for Education states that more than half of the extraordinary elementary school students (52 percent) have their country of birth in Austria and 20 percent even have Austrian citizenship. “If children are born here, grow up, attend kindergarten for at least two years and then still cannot speak German sufficiently, it has nothing to do with refugee movements or the permanent positions in Vienna’s schools, but simply with the failure of this city government in the elementary education sector “, says Zierfuß.
“But no matter what the construction site in Vienna’s education sector is – for City Councilor Wiederkehr there has always been only one culprit and that is the federal government. The question actually arises as to why there is a city councilor for education in Vienna if he does not want to or cannot fulfill his constitutionally guaranteed responsibility in the elementary education sector,” said Zierfuß. “The fact is that the city government’s measures are not effective or not effective enough and the problems cannot be solved with a few dozen more language teachers in Vienna’s kindergartens,” said the education spokesman. “Vienna finally has to use the big levers and not just keep turning small screws that don’t lead to any significant changes,” said Zierfuß.
The demands of the Vienna People’s Party have long been on the table: “After a mandatory language proficiency assessment, there should be compulsory attendance at kindergarten for all 3-year-old children, including intensive German support, if it has been determined that they need to learn German. In addition, all educators must have language support training and all assistants must have a language level of C1. In addition, these children need exclusive German support, which is why a full-time language teacher must be permanently available at all kindergarten locations with a high level of language support needs. It is also important to think about linking the amount of kindergarten funding to the quality of German language support in kindergarten. “After all, the kindergarten has a clear educational mission, the fulfillment of which must be tied to the amount of funding,” concluded the education spokesman.
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