Are our children moving up to the next level of school too quickly? Vienna City Councillor for Education Christoph Wiederkehr (NEOS) can imagine extending primary school from four to six years. The pressure in the fourth grade is an ‘incredible burden’.
At the moment, children are being separated too early into middle school or high school, he said in the interview with ‘Vienna Today’. “We need to change the education system much faster so that children are prepared for a self-determined, successful life,” Wiederkehr said.
Longer bridge as a means to success?
The primary school is the type of school that “functions reasonably well and is child-oriented”. Children would be pushed into secondary school or high school far too early.
Two extra years of elementary school would also take the pressure off students and parents, Wiederkehr says. “The fourth grade of elementary school is an incredible burden for everyone involved.”
Democracy lessons and German promotion
In primary education, Wiederkehr again spoke out for a second compulsory kindergarten year. This is also good for language acquisition. Figures from Statistics Austria show that about half of all Viennese schoolchildren do not speak German in everyday life. Vienna would counteract this with language support, according to Wiederkehr.
The city government demanded an opportunity index from the Ministry of Education, so that schools with special challenges would receive more resources. There should also be democracy lessons for everyone from primary school onwards. “The sooner we teach children what the values are here: equality between men and women or that a religious book should never be above the law, the more is possible.”
The numbers are going up
The new school year will once again bring slightly more “Taferlklasseler” (school starters) and a slight increase in the total number of pupils. According to estimates by Statistics Austria, 98,000 primary school pupils will experience their first day of school. That is 0.6 percent more than last school year.
The Viennese Greens warned on Tuesday that the “school start chaos” they identified last year will repeat itself in Vienna this year. Party leader Judith Pühringer and education speakers Julia Malle and Felix Stadler were convinced at a press conference that the teacher shortage, especially in primary schools, is “becoming increasingly dramatic.” They called for measures to make the profession more attractive, such as higher salaries.
Greens for “mixed” classes
There were also complaints that schools in Vienna were becoming increasingly segregated. Parents would do everything they could to ensure that their child gets a place at the school of their choice. This is understandable. However, parents who know the system, speak the language and have contacts have a clear advantage over those who do not have this knowledge, according to the Greens. This means that in some primary school classes, hardly any children speak German as their mother tongue. However, kindergartens and schools should be socially and economically mixed.
The Greens are calling for the school choice to be expanded to include socio-economic criteria. In future, parents should be able to indicate five schools of their choice. The final allocation will be made centrally based on the criteria of proximity to home, siblings, mother tongue and the parents’ level of education. This should result in better mixing on site. There was also a request to expand language and German support in nursery school.
Source: Krone
I am Ida Scott, a journalist and content author with a passion for uncovering the truth. I have been writing professionally for Today Times Live since 2020 and specialize in political news. My career began when I was just 17; I had already developed a knack for research and an eye for detail which made me stand out from my peers.
