The new regulations for school assistance in Styria are currently causing problems for many families. These people support children with disabilities in the classroom, but there are still no announcements.
“It’s hard enough for us to deal with this disease and give our daughter as normal and carefree a childhood as possible. And then the authorities keep putting obstacles in our way,” complains a father of a first-grader with diabetes. In principle, positive: School help has recently become available for children with diabetes for the first time, although the family remained in the dark for a long time. The promise of 20 hours a week only came at the last minute, after the parents had pulled out all the stops.
There are several similar cases among the Styrian Neos, who are fiercely critical: “There is currently complete chaos in the all-important school aid, which is unreasonable and irresponsible,” says party leader Niko Swatek.
In the country all the threads come together
This is the background: School assistance involves additional staff who help children with disabilities in the classroom. Until now, applications were processed by the district authorities or the municipality of Graz, but since this year, this has been done centrally by the state education department. Schools also had more flexibility in deploying assistants.
But during the holidays, several principals complained to the media that they were still unsure how many hours they would have available. Even now, a week after school started, some reports have still not been processed, according to the Neos. Swatek: “The desperation among many parents is great.”
Many requests arrived too late
At the request of the “Krone”, the Styrian education department said that the majority of the announcements “have already been prepared. Before the start of the school year, the communities received all relevant information about the school assistance applications for the coming school year.
By the end of March, 1,800 applications should have been submitted to the education department. But 650 were late and in some cases documents were missing and had to be requested. Even short school changes sometimes cause delays, it is said.
Topic at the next session of the state parliament
The Neos will discuss school aid in the state parliament on Tuesday. In the department of state education council member Werner Amon, it is pointed out that the new system was once unanimously decided in the state parliament – also by the Neos. And one thing is clear: all existing notifications remain valid in any case, the problem only concerns new applications.
Source: Krone
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