Carinthia starts educational offensive: more groups and specialists for daycare centers!

Carinthia starts educational offensive: more groups and specialists for daycare centers!

Carinthia faces a significant step in elementary pedagogy: The second mandatory kindergarten year is now to be increasingly used to promote language support. As reported by ORF Carinthia , state education officer Daniel Fellner (SPÖ) expects not much more demand for kindergarten places due to the already high care rate. Only 235 additional children can be expected, which made the investment costs of around 5.5 million euros per kindergarten year be manageable. The time could not be better because the federal government has promised additional funds of 4.5 million euros to finance the second compulsory year. Currently, this cost burden is only borne by the state.

The reforms in Carinthian elementary formation already have an effect: According to ktn.gv.at , the support quota and the number of groups are continuously increased under the new Carinthian children's education and care law. So far, 22 new groups have already been created, which leads to a total of 342 new places for children over three years. The budget for elementary education rose from 85 million euros in 2022 to around 144 million euros in 2024, and funding of 5.6 million euros has already been paid out of the educational structure for elementary education. Carinthia can currently refer to 22,424 children in elementary education that are looked after by around 3,900 specialists.

specialist shortage and training offensive

A central concern remains the shortage of skilled workers, which can also be felt in Carinthia. To counteract this, a comprehensive training offensive was initiated. In the next six years, various programs between 600 and 720 new elementary educators are to be trained. This includes new colleagues at different locations and the improvement of the framework conditions in order to make the profession more attractive. Fellner emphasizes that measures to raise the entry salaries to around 3027 euros gross and the doubling of the hours for additional pedagogical activities have great potential to bring more graduates to the industry.