Massive German funding: 62 million euros for better education in Vienna!

Massive German funding: 62 million euros for better education in Vienna!

Wien, Österreich - On April 16, 2025, the Council of Ministers decided to have a comprehensive package of measures to strengthen German funding in schools. The aim is to significantly improve the quality of German lessons and to expand the training of teachers in this area. According to a report by vienna.at , the positions for German funding from currently 577 to impressive 1,324 are to be increased.

This personnel offensive includes several key measures. In this way, an obligation is introduced that prospective teachers have to complete an apprenticeship in "German as a foreign language" (DAF). In addition, a mandatory offer for DAF/DAZ with 6 ECTS points is integrated as part of the new curricula of educational training. In order to ensure the quality of the training, the universities of pedagogical universities are legally obliged to implement the focus "German as a second language and linguistic education" in the teaching degree of primary level.

training and lateral entrants

Since the school year 2022/23, almost 17,000 teachers have participated in further training in the DAF/DAZ area. In addition, around 400 career changers in German and 200 in German were certified as a second language/foreign language by March 2025. This leads to a total number of around 600 specially trained transverse entrants in the area of German funding. The annual investments in German funding are increased by an additional 62 million euros to a total of 108 million euros.

Another focus of developments is the need for positions in the individual federal states. In Vienna in particular, an increase from 290 positions is sought to a total of 521. In Upper Austria, the percentage increase is 203 percent with 159 additional positions, which raises the total number to 237.

context of language support

In the further context of language support in Germany, the second program phase of the "Education through Language and Scripture" (bite) initiative has been running under the title "Biss-Transfer" by 2025 since March 1, 2020. The aim of this initiative is to transfer the results from the first phase (2013 to 2019) into up to 2,700 schools and daycare centers nationwide, supported by state institutions and quality institutions of the federal states. Information on this can be found on the website of the kmk

The focus of the bite program includes, among other things, the reading and writing promotion as well as the language-sensitive specialist lessons include. A steering committee advises on the design of the initiative, while a consortium from several educational institutions, including the Mercator Institute for Language Development, supports the implementation.

These latest measures for German funding and the comprehensive programs for language education show the commitment of both countries to increase the quality of education through targeted language support and to convey important skills.