School reforms fail to ease workloads as staff shortages persist
While 80 percent of ministry directives were scrapped at the start of the current school year, "not a single school has told me this has actually eased their workload—in fact, quite the opposite," says Kimberger. In some cases, schools later realized that certain circulars and decrees were still needed, prompting the ministry to reinstate them after weeks of debate. The union representative cited the supervision directive—detailing teachers' duty of care—as one example. "This is about legal certainty! Teachers are educators, not lawyers," he stressed.
Too Much Red Tape, Too Few New Staff
Kimberger also warns against taking the government's promises of additional staff at face value. "The minister announced 1,300 new German-language support teachers, and schools were left wondering: OK, but where are these people supposed to come from?" Even the pledge to give schools more autonomy in German-language instruction—a long-standing demand—and abolish mandatory separate remedial classes falls short in his view.
Schools that want to design their own language support programs in the future must now submit a detailed concept to the ministry by mid-April. "At a time when 'cutting bureaucracy' is the constant mantra, this is completely off the mark," Kimberger criticizes. Many schools have already told him they won't bother with the extra paperwork and will stick with the often unpopular separate remedial classes and courses instead.
The expansion of administrative staff has also yielded mixed results after one semester, according to Kimberger. Budget constraints mean fewer positions have been created for the new pedagogical-administrative specialists than needed, with only a third of the 190 planned roles currently filled. While additional posts in school psychology and social work have been advertised, he notes, "I haven't met a single new school psychologist yet." (APA)
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