This year, Vienna has seen an average of 300 children and teenagers joining the school system each month through family reunification. Teacher representatives have warned of a possible “collapse” of Vienna’s compulsory schools. These schools were already struggling with a lack of staff and many students facing difficulties with the German language. Although the numbers are now going down, young children, especially those under seven, still make up the largest group. This is also affecting Vienna’s kindergartens.
While there are usually enough places in Vienna, the availability is becoming tighter, experts told APA (Austrian Press Agency). Many of the children who come to Vienna through family reunification do not get a place in kindergartens, said Natascha Taslimi from the Austrian Network for Elementary Education (NEBÖ). There is enough space, but not enough staff to care for the children. The situation varies across districts, but there are often no more places in inner-city areas, said Viktoria Miffek from the kindergarten platform Educare.
The concentration of children in certain districts can lead to overload. “We already have a staff-to-child ratio that does not allow us to support and cater to children individually,” said Miffek. In some kindergartens, only half the staff are trained elementary educators, lacking the expertise to handle certain situations. “It is simply not within an elementary educator’s skill set to support children with trauma in their development. It just doesn’t work in this setting,” said Taslimi. Educators are left to handle this issue on their own.
City measures such as extra language support staff or regular training in trauma education are “of course good, but just a drop in the ocean of a highly stressed system,” said Miffek. Instead of external language assistance, a better staff-to-child ratio and a long-term plan to improve the quality of kindergartens are needed.
Lack of Data
Neither NEBÖ nor Educare has received any feedback from other federal states about space problems related to family reunification. It is largely unclear how many children join each month under this title and whether there are enough places for them. The data is either not collected or lies with the providers, often the municipalities, according to the responsible authorities in the federal states during an APA survey.
The federal states also could not provide any figures on family reunification in the school sector upon request. In Lower Austria, for example, it was said that the data is not collected centrally. Currently, the challenges in schools are manageable. In Vorarlberg, almost 500 students with an asylum background attended school as of March; how many came through family reunification is unknown. For children who are not literate and have never attended school, the challenge is significant. However, according to the state press office, the capacities in schools are currently generally sufficient.
In Tyrol, children only join during the school year in individual cases, and no statistics are kept on reasons such as family reunification, according to the education directorate. In principle, there are enough resources to provide a school place for everyone. Carinthia also believes that family reunification “does not affect it very much,” according to the education directorate. There are no noticeable increases in children with a first language other than German. Similarly, in Burgenland, there has been no significant change in the number of asylum-seeking children recently, and there is no specific data on family reunification. Non-literate children only join in isolated cases.
In Salzburg, 44 children from abroad join the school system each month. Adequate schooling can still be ensured, according to the state, but middle schools and polytechnic schools in the city of Salzburg are reaching their capacity limits. The room and staff situation in Styrian schools is tense but under control, according to APA inquiries from the office of Education Councilor Werner Amon (ÖVP), without specifying numbers. “However, there are no capacities to take in additional children within the framework of family reunification.”
In Upper Austria, two per thousand of the approximately 111,000 compulsory school students come from a non-European country, and figures on family reunification are not collected, according to the education directorate. Regardless, for Governor Thomas Stelzer (ÖVP), “it is obvious that Austria and Upper Austria have been brought to the limits of their capacities by the distribution of asylum seekers within the EU and also by the phenomenon of family reunification,” as he recently emphasized in an APA interview.
