City council demands:

“Mobile phone ban at Viennese elementary school”

(Bild: krone.tv )

On krone.tv, City Councillor for Education Christoph Wiederkehr (Neos) takes stock of his work in the Viennese education system over the past five years and makes an interesting demand: "The addiction to cell phones and social media is increasing massively, cell phones are an attention killer. I am therefore calling for a ban on cell phones in Viennese elementary school."

In the background discussion after the interview, the city councillor talks about so-called 'cell phone safes', where pupils should put their cell phones while at school in future. When leaving the school building, the cell phones could then be removed from these safes. If the cell phone ban proves successful in elementary school, it would be conceivable to extend it to other types of school. For example, to Viennese secondary schools. There would be several reasons for this. For example, the fact that cell phones would increasingly take pupils' attention away from lessons.

Influence of religion
However, other factors are also having a strong impact on teaching. Wiederkehr: "Society has changed massively in recent years. For example, there is an increasing influence of different religions on our school system. And overall, it has of course been a turbulent five years for the education system. First the pandemic, where we now also have reduced German language skills among children in kindergarten. Then the war in Ukraine, which brought a total of 6,000 additional children into the Viennese school system. These are developments that worry me. It is unacceptable that parents do not speak to female teachers."

In the city councillor's view, there are also far too few legal options to defend oneself against the current developments. Wiederkehr: "We need high administrative penalties."

More support staff
The fact that there is a shortage of teachers in Vienna has been countered in recent years with increased measures. Wiederkehr: "We are making the teaching profession more and more attractive. With numerous measures. For example, teaching staff receive a public transport ticket from Wiener Linien. And there are now also many more support staff for teachers in Vienna than was previously the case."

The City Councillor for Education says that there used to even be letters from the Ministry of Education asking people not to become teachers because there were too many staff. Wiederkehr: "That was during the time of Minister Gehrer." And now there are sometimes too few teachers. Wiederkehr, in summary: "Far too little progress has been made in the education sector (meaning the Ministry of Education, editor's note) in recent decades."

You can watch the whole interview in the video above