
According to an announcement by the Vienna Directorate of Education on Saturday, the number of students suspended from classes in Vienna has decreased by seven percent in the last academic year.
The data reveals that 814 suspensions were recorded in the 2022/23 school year, while the 2023/24 school year saw a reduction to 756 suspensions. Christoph Wiederkehr, Vienna’s City Councilor for Education (NEOS), attributes this decline to the initial impact of a violence prevention initiative introduced last year in response to increasing incidents of violence in Viennese schools.
Additionally, the preventive programs offered by the Vienna Police Directorate to reduce school violence were reportedly well-received. Wiederkehr highlighted the continued collaboration among stakeholders as crucial, especially in the context of ongoing global crises and sustained immigration to Vienna, in their shared goal of eliminating violence from classrooms.
“We will persist in combating school violence with various support measures for conflict situations and numerous preventive initiatives. Each suspension and each police report related to school violence is one too many,” Wiederkehr emphasized.
However, the ÖVP responded by noting that the suspension numbers remain high despite declining. Education spokesperson Harald Zierfuß welcomed the decrease but pointed out that it still represents the second-highest number ever recorded. He urged the city to implement comprehensive violence prevention measures across all mandatory schools, referencing an ÖVP-proposed program.
Meanwhile, the FPÖ argued that the slight decrease in suspensions does not reflect the severe issues within Vienna’s schools. Maximilian Krauss, the FPÖ Vienna parliamentary group leader, stated that the situation remains critical, with claims that Islamist students are intimidating peers and teachers, and more than half of the children do not speak German as their primary language. He criticized Wiederkehr for failing in his role as Education Councilor.