Tutoring in the summer

Every fifth pupil also swots up during the vacations

(Bild: thinkstockphotos.de)

Many pupils also have to study school material during the summer vacation: One in five take advantage of private tutoring. Most of them take paid tutoring lessons, although there are also free offers, the Chamber of Labor found out in a survey.

According to the survey, 22 percent of all school types need tutoring in the summer, 31 percent of AHS pupils and 16 percent of those who were attending elementary school at the time of the survey in early June. According to the AK school costs study, the figure was most recently 30 percent during the school year. According to the survey, paid summer tutoring costs parents around 290 euros on average.

AK: "School must take place at school"
For the Chamber of Labor, this means that parents are additionally burdened during the summer vacations, which are already expensive due to external childcare and vacation camps, and single parents are particularly hard hit by the costs. "School must take place at school - and not at the kitchen table or in expensive tutoring institutes," emphasized Ilkim Erdost, Head of Education at the Vienna Chamber of Labour, in a statement.

Schools must be organized and equipped in such a way that practicing and learning at school is sufficient, she demands once again "more good all-day schools" and a social index for funding, through which locations with special challenges receive more resources.

Support for financially weak pupils required
Erdost is also calling for more support for local authorities, which are often overstretched financially and in terms of staff, when it comes to vacation care. Low-threshold support should ensure that children receive recreational support regardless of their parents' money. For families at risk of poverty and single parents, the AK is once again insisting on an increase in unemployment benefit and social assistance and the state maintenance guarantee, in addition to targeted support services such as vacation and learning camps.

The data was collected in an interim survey by Foresight (formerly SORA) as part of the Chamber of Labor's school costs study (1021 parents with 1277 schoolchildren, fluctuation range 2.1 percentage points).