Vienna's schools in change: Arabic becomes the main language in the classroom!

Vienna's schools in change: Arabic becomes the main language in the classroom!

In Vienna, the school area situation continues to come to a head. Although the government wants to temporarily suspend family reunification, according to a statement by the APA, this will only bring short -term relief. The educational experts warn that Vienna continues to need additional school classes due to continuous growth. This necessity is underpinned by an increasing number of compulsory students, because last year the number of these students increased by almost five percent. In the previous two years, the increase was almost four percent, which illustrates the urgency of the problem.

The educational directorate reports that more than 25,000 new compulsory students are expected in the city by 2024. In order to meet the high demand, 1,200 new school classes have already been organized, also in response to international crises, such as the refugee movement and the Ukraine War. The region has also undertaken to reduce classes with over 25 students and to approve a voluntary 11th and 12th school year for young people with disabilities, which also exacerbates the shortage of school place, since more and more children have to be accommodated on site. As the APA reported , some newly created classrooms are mobile classes that were originally designed for a gradual registration and are therefore not fully occupied at the beginning.

increasing language diversity and challenges in class

Another urgent problem is shown in the linguistic composition of Vienna. According to a current evaluation of the educational directorate, a third speaks Arabic as a first language as "extraordinarily" classified. This is directly related to family reunification, through which over 300 Syrian children came to the city every month. This leads to a huge need for German funding classes that have been specifically set up to support these children. The "Krone" already reported last year that languages ​​such as Arabic, Turkish and the languages ​​of the former Yugoslavia are increasingly dominating in everyday school life and thus creating new challenges for both schools and children.

Almost 45 percent of the school beginners are classified as extraordinary, which means that they are not graded immediately and that targeted support in German lessons must be received. This situation becomes even more complicated due to the diversity of the first languages, since in addition to Arabic, Turkish, Serbian and Romanian play a major role. In order to integrate this multiculturalism in class, around 200 educational institutions in Vienna offer lessons in a total of 24 different languages, which further reinforces the challenges of the school system.