Less paperwork – NEOS wants to make schools free of bureaucracy

Teachers teach, students learn: Unfortunately, the school system is not that simple. On the contrary, many teachers also have to take on tasks that have little or nothing to do with their core job of teaching: documentation requirements, list management – ​​in short: paperwork. It is precisely this problem that the NEOS are now focusing on, because they suspect that the administrative workload at educational institutions is excessive and therefore a reason for many teachers to throw in the towel.

Trust instead of control
With the petition “Drive out the bureaucracy monster from the schools”, the Pinks call for educational reforms. The three-step program offers the following when it comes to bureaucracy: avoid, simplify, delegate. In concrete terms, NEOS wants to grant schools full autonomy, as education spokesperson Johannes Gasser explains: “The school should be a place where people like to go – where children and young people like to learn and teachers like to work. This can be achieved with trust instead of control, with autonomy instead of bureaucracy, with a modern division of labor.”

Personal responsibility should therefore replace “control and documentation requirements”, and the Pinks also want administrative tasks to be bundled to avoid duplication. Last but not least, Gasser also wants to actively support teachers in the form of new colleagues who will only take care of administrative tasks. Due to the staff shortage in the education sector, Gasser fears that major reforms are currently difficult to implement. “Improving working conditions can help make the profession more attractive, free up capacity and improve the school system,” he is convinced.

Hold others accountable
He sees the next necessary steps in Vorarlberg’s schools as “exploring the possibilities of reducing bureaucracy”, and the NEOS have already applied for this. Gasser hopes a lot from the application and the petition – and expects at least as much from others: “We NEOS expect that the state government and the Education Directorate will address this shortcoming in the education system in a promising way. We can no longer accept that bureaucracy breaks the wings of our students, that a quarter of young people at the end of compulsory education have great difficulty with reading and arithmetic, and that the teacher shortage is becoming increasingly serious because no one wants it. don’t do this job anymore.”

As reported, Vorarlberg, like many other states, had problems filling all teaching positions in compulsory schools for the current semester. The teacher shortage will likely remain a problem for a while.