New regulations this year

Assistance for schoolchildren: parents complain of “chaos”

Many children need assistance in class.

(Bild: Scharinger Daniel/Pressefoto Scharinger)

The new regulations for school assistance in Styria are currently causing annoyance among many families. These people support children with disabilities in the classroom - but numerous notifications have still not been issued.

"It's hard enough for us to cope with this illness and give our daughter as normal and carefree a childhood as possible. And then the authorities are constantly putting obstacles in our way," complains a father of a first-grader who suffers from diabetes. Basically positive: school assistance has recently become possible for diabetic children for the first time, but 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.

Several similar cases have been brought to the attention of the Styrian Neos party, which is vehemently critical: "There is currently hopeless chaos when it comes to the all-important school assistance, which is unreasonable and irresponsible," says party leader Niko Swatek.

The Styrian Neos leader Niko Swatek

(Bild: Christian Jauschowetz)

All the threads come together at the state level
This is the background: School assistance involves additional staff helping children with disabilities in the classroom. Previously, applications were processed by the district authorities or the Graz City Council, but since this year this has been done centrally by the state's education department. The schools have also been given more flexibility in the deployment of support staff.

However, during the vacations, several head teachers complained in the media that they were still unsure how many hours they would have available. Even now, a week after the start of school, some of the notifications have still not been processed, according to the Neos. Swatek: "The desperation among many parents is great." 

Many applications arrived too late
In response to an inquiry from the "Krone", the Styrian education department stated that the majority of the notifications "have already been prepared. The municipalities received all relevant information about the applications for school assistance for the coming school year before the start of the school year".

1800 applications should have been submitted to the education department by the end of March. However, 650 arrived late, in some cases documents were missing and had to be requested later. Short-notice school changes also sometimes cause delays, it is said. 

Topic at the next state parliament session
The Neos will raise the issue of school assistance in the state parliament on Tuesday. The department of State Councillor for Education Werner Amon points out that the new system was once unanimously approved in the state parliament - i.e. also by the Neos. And one thing is clear: all existing decisions remain in place anyway, the problem only relates to new applications.