In addition, teachers should be able to work more efficiently by improving communication between the education ministry and directorates with schools and bundling appointments, according to a press release from the department.
“Our teachers do their best every day in Austria’s schools. Additional tasks should not put obstacles in their way,” says Polaschek. By freeing up administrative activities, the teachers should be able to concentrate fully on their core task – imparting knowledge. The relief, together with the further development of teacher training and “a fundamentally more positive narrative of school”, are “further stones in the mosaic for an attractive image of teachers in the future”.
In concrete terms, this school year will see administrative simplifications in the case of PCR tests – although no regular tests are currently being carried out anyway due to the pandemic situation. In addition, schools no longer have to report to the health authorities which students are positive and therefore no longer have to carry out contact tracing.
Additional funds for secretarial staff
Better coordination between the Directorate of Education and the Ministry of Education should mean that fewer school staff meetings will be necessary in the future, and these should also be made more efficient. Circulars and decrees should be designed less frequently, more clearly, more simply and, above all, information decrees should be summarized in the form of “info mailings”.
In addition, the communication effort between directors, teachers and parents should be “normalized step by step and the ‘crisis mode’ ended”. Most recently, additional funds for secretarial staff at compulsory schools were also fixed. It is the third announcement of administrative relief since autumn 2021, and topics such as the reduction in circulars and decrees are long-running issues.
MEGA Bildungsstiftung, Österreichischer Bundesverlag (öbv) and Innovationsstiftung für Bildung (ISB) have meanwhile taken World Teachers’ Day as an opportunity for a campaign: In videos, personalities such as entrepreneur Josef Zotter or Section Head of the Ministry of Education Margareta Scheuringer tell how teachers shape and positively influence them to have.
Source: Nachrichten
