Lack of staff

Family reunification: Viennese kindergartens challenged

In Vienna, it is not only the schools but also the kindergartens that are challenged by family reunification.

(Bild: stock.adobe.com/candy1812 - stock.adobe.com)

In Vienna, an average of 300 children and young people have entered the school system every month this year due to family reunification. Teachers' representatives have therefore warned of a "collapse" of Vienna's compulsory schools, which were already challenged by a lack of staff and many pupils with German language problems. The numbers are now falling, but children are still the largest group, especially those up to the age of seven. Vienna's kindergartens are now also feeling the effects of this.

Even though there are generally enough places in Vienna, the supply is becoming increasingly scarce, as experts from the field report to APA. According to Natascha Taslimi from Netzwerk Elementarer Bildung Österreichs (NEBÖ), not all of the children who come to Vienna via family reunification are offered a place.

Lack of staff
Although there is enough space for everyone in Vienna, there is a lack of staff to run the groups. The situation varies from district to district. Viktoria Miffek from the kindergarten platform Educare also reports that there are often no more places, especially in inner-city areas.

The concentration of children in certain districts can certainly lead to excessive demands. "We already have a specialist-child ratio that doesn't allow us to provide the same level of support and individual attention to children," says Miffek.

In Vienna, there is a lack of staff in particular, but also a lack of specialist knowledge.

(Bild: DPA)

In some nurseries, only half of the staff employed are trained nursery teachers, which means there is a lack of specialist knowledge for dealing with them. "Accompanying children with trauma in their development simply doesn't fall within the remit of an early childhood educator. That's not possible in this setting," NEBÖ spokesperson Taslimi also criticizes. The teachers would be left alone in this matter.

"A drop in the ocean"
For Miffek, city measures such as additional language support staff or regular training in areas such as trauma pedagogy are "of course good, but a drop in the ocean in a very overburdened system". Instead of external language assistance, which Taslimi also views critically, what is needed is a better childcare ratio and a long-term step-by-step plan to improve quality in nurseries.

Neither NEBÖ nor Educare have yet received any feedback from other federal states about space problems in connection with the influx of families. It is largely unclear how many new children arrive each month under this title and whether there are enough places for them. The data is not collected or is held by the providers - often the municipalities - according to the offices responsible for nursery schools in the federal states during the APA call.

No concrete data from the federal states
The federal states were also unable to provide any figures on family reunification in the school sector when asked. Lower Austria, for example, stated that the data was not collected centrally. In any case, the challenges at schools are currently manageable. In Vorarlberg, just under 500 pupils with an asylum background were attending a school in March; it is not known how many have come via family reunification. The challenge is great for children who are not literate and who have never attended school before. However, according to the state press office, there is currently sufficient capacity at schools.

In Tyrol, children are only added in individual cases during the school year and no statistics are kept on reasons such as family reunification, according to the education directorate. In principle, however, there are enough resources to provide everyone with a school place. According to its own assessment, Carinthia is also unlikely to be "greatly affected" by family reunification; according to the Education Directorate, there has been no noticeable increase in the number of children with a first language other than German. There has also been no significant change in the number of asylum-seeking children in Burgenland recently, and there is no specific data on family reunification. In any case, non-literate children have only been added sporadically.

"No capacities"
In Salzburg, 44 children from abroad enter the school system every month. According to the state, adequate schooling can still be ensured, but the secondary schools and polytechnic schools in the city of Salzburg are reaching their capacity limits. The space and staffing situation at Styrian schools is tense, but under control, according to an APA inquiry from the office of State Education Councillor Werner Amon (ÖVP), without giving any figures. "However, there is no capacity to take in additional children as part of family reunification."

In Upper Austria, two per thousand of the approximately 111,000 compulsory school pupils come from a non-European country, figures on family reunification are not collected according to the Education Directorate. For Governor Thomas Stelzer (ÖVP), it is nevertheless "obvious that Austria and Upper Austria have simply been pushed to their limits by the distribution of asylum seekers in the EU and also by the phenomenon of family reunification", as he recently emphasized in an APA interview.