These are the average tutoring costs per school child

School – Big increase in tutoring costs The tutoring rate was recently 30 percent, three percentage points more than in the previous year, according to the Chamber of Labor’s “tutoring barometer” presented on Tuesday. In times of high inflation, expenses also increase: EUR 121.6 million went into private tutoring in the 2022/23 school year (+ EUR 8.9 million year-on-year). The average is 720 euros per school child. According to the study (IFES survey of 3,213 parents with 4,893 school children between February and mid-April 2023, fluctuation range 1.4 or 1.7 percent), 78 percent of the children are at least occasionally supervised when doing homework and learning and practicing . Almost a quarter of the children are helped by their parents practically every day. Another third do this at least once a week. Around six out of ten children are supervised at least once a week when doing their homework and studying.

For a third of all students, the lessons and learning at home are not enough to achieve the learning goals, the AK said. Parents also have to organize private tutoring for them in order to enable them to be successful at school: 30 percent of all pupils have received external tutoring in the current school year or in the last summer holidays, whether paid or unpaid, e.g. B. in the form of free school tutoring. A total of 167,000 children and young people, which is 17 percent of all pupils, received paid tutoring this school year or in the summer before.

Comparatively, the tuition quotas are usually highest in the AHS upper level – here the tuition quota, with a slight increase, totals 44 percent (+5 percentage points). 30 percent of them received paid tutoring. There was a striking increase, with the highest value after the AHS upper level, in middle schools with a tuition rate of currently 39 percent (+9 percentage points), with both paid and unpaid tuition increasing in this type of school. 18 percent were in a paid form (+3 percentage points). In the AHS lower grade, tuition is very similar overall with a share of 33 percent (22 percent paid tuition). Overall, paid tutoring has tended to increase in middle schools and the lower grades of AHS.

Ilkim Erdost, Head of Education at the AK, described all of this in a press conference as “not fair and not pedagogically sensible”. Parents are forced to finance a multi-million dollar business with their income. For many, this financial burden is no longer manageable. “Educational success is a private matter in Austria, and it must not continue like this,” she criticized. A school system based on learning at home and parental support is no longer up to date. Educational injustice is thus cemented.

From Erdost’s point of view, the best antidote is the entangled all-day school. But there also needs to be enough funding opportunities, a drastic reduction in school costs and relief for families and single parents at risk of poverty.