Education
Many working parents in particular send their children to all-day elementary schools (GTVS). School enrollments for the coming school year are currently underway. However, there is criticism from the teachers’ side because there is a lack of staff.
Lessons and leisure hours alternate in an intertwined all-day elementary school, at least in theory. In practice, that often doesn’t work, says Headmistress Elisabeth Faast. “We can cover the lessons. We’ve got the German language support you need covered. But everything else that actually constitutes the all-day school, we can’t offer that at the moment.” So you can’t offer any special support offers, choir lessons or computer science, says the head of the GTVS Rzehakgasse.
Teacher representative speaks of emergency operation
At some locations, the problem is even more serious, says union representative Thomas Krebs. “This means that many locations can actually only offer emergency operation. The school can no longer do what parents were promised, although we would like to do it: that there are enough staff in the system.”
Too few staff for all-day elementary schools
In Vienna, the model of the all-day elementary school is very popular. Teacher representatives, however, criticize the model. Accordingly, there is also a lack of staff here.
In order to still have the necessary offers, schools often turn to external providers, which often means additional costs for the parents. A suboptimal solution, says Education Director Heinrich Himmer. “For us it is important: everything that is offered in the school framework must and should be largely free of charge. Otherwise you create inequalities. And that’s the worst thing we can do. We want to offer all children the same opportunities.”
Attractiveness of the location required
The teacher representative finds it incomprehensible that the all-day elementary school model should continue to be expanded despite the lack of staff. “That means that at some point parents will also start to cry out louder that they want this high quality again. We need qualified teachers for this.” Vienna must be made attractive as a location so that existing teaching staff do not migrate to other federal states and young people decide to teach in the federal capital in the first place.