Politics
City Councilor for Education Christoph Wiederkehr (NEOS) is demanding an “integration package” from Education Minister Martin Polaschek (ÖVP) with additional resources for refugee children. A few weeks ago, the minister promised additional funds.
“Unfortunately, nothing happened – on the contrary,” criticized the deputy mayor in a broadcast on Wednesday. For example, the CoV support hours have been reduced. Of the approximately 11,000 Ukrainian children and young people in the Austrian school system, around 3,650 are currently attending a school in Vienna.
150 additional school classes
That would correspond to almost 150 additional school classes, Wiederkehr calculated. The number of refugees from other countries of origin has also climbed to its highest level since 2016 this year. After the migration movement in 2015, the federal government supported the states, Wiederkehr recalled: In the years 2016 to 2018, a total of almost 224 million euros were made available, of which 61 million were for regular classes due to the existing compulsory schooling.
Expansion of mobile action teams
Later, this integration pot was increased even further until 2018 – for example to support additional language courses for schoolchildren whose knowledge of German was not sufficient. According to Wiederkehr, Vienna urgently needs more human and financial resources. Specifically, these are to be used to expand mobile teams – with intercultural teachers, school psychologists and language support staff.