Unlike in the past two years, students with only a five in their report card can no longer be automatically promoted to the next higher class. Education Minister Martin Polaschek (ÖVP) made this clear in a new decree. In addition, parallel to the end of the PCR tests at schools, the corona test obligation for the oral Matura is also no longer applicable.
In the past two years, there have been reliefs for students when sitting down due to the corona. With a single five in your report card you were automatically allowed to move up to the next school year. This was only excluded if the subject in question had already received a negative assessment in the previous year. The teachers’ conference could also permit promotion if there were two or more five students (in this case, however, only if these subjects were successfully completed in the previous year). Another consequence: even those who were not allowed to move up, but then managed all but one of the re-examinations, were automatically allowed to move on to the next class.
Normal specifications again
This year, instead of the exception, the normal requirements of the School Instruction Act apply again, according to the decree. This means that you can only move up with a single “not enough” in the certificate if the class conference agrees. If she doesn’t, you have to take a re-examination.
The phasing out of compulsory PCR tests in schools as of today is also recorded in the decree. Starting tomorrow, Thursday, students will no longer have to do weekly PCR tests to attend classes.
New Corona rules
The same also applies to the Matura. So if you start tomorrow for the oral matriculation examination (or the compensation examination), you no longer need to test yourself beforehand. Previously, a negative corona test (antigen test no more than 24 hours before the start of the exam, PCR test no more than 72 hours before the start of the exam) was required on each day of the exam – the only exceptions were those people who had been infected in the last 60 days.
At the end of the school year, according to “Standard” (Wednesday edition), the school site monitoring as part of the wastewater analyzes to detect the corona virus will also expire. Throughout the school year, samples were taken twice a week from more than 100 sewage treatment plants with school locations in the catchment area in Austria in order to obtain an overview of the local infection processes and mutations. The Ministry of Education justifies this by saying that they wanted to find out whether the virus can be quantitatively detected in wastewater or whether the analyzes can be rolled out in a standardized way across the board. Wastewater monitoring was originally announced as an early warning system in order to avoid large-scale school closures and shift work in combination with PCR tests and the obligation to wear masks.
This leaves the national wastewater monitoring of the Ministry of Health. However, this is carried out at fewer locations and includes the 24 largest sewage treatment plants in Austria with a catchment area of just over half the population.
Source: Nachrichten
