School started again on Monday. In order to carry as few corona infections as possible from the holidays into the classes, the students should test at home in advance and the well-known tests also took place in the schools themselves on Monday. The results of the rapid antigen tests on Monday are now available: 1,165 have hit, according to the Ministry of Education. There are already PCR results for Vienna: 639 positive tests were registered on Monday, 1,354 on the weekend.
138 positive Tests in Oberösterreich
A total of almost 700,000 students were tested in the classroom on Monday. The most positive antigen test results were in Vienna (271), followed by Lower Austria (180), Tyrol (160), Upper Austria (138), Styria (128), Salzburg (112), Carinthia (83), Vorarlberg (59) and Burgenland (34).
For the time being, however, these are only suspected cases, as a certain proportion of the “nose drill tests” used is always false positive. At the same time, there are studies according to which only 20 percent of asymptomatically infected students are detected with this type of testing, and it could be even less with the Omicron variant. Positive antigen test results cannot lead to class closings anyway, as emphasized in the office of Vienna’s City Councilor for Health Peter Hacker (SPÖ). If one or more tests are successful, the respective pupils are taken out of the class for suspected cases. The others can continue to be taught. Measures are only taken when the suspicion has been confirmed by PCR tests.
Elf Klassen im Distance Learning
According to the Ministry of Education, the first data collected on PCR results from the schools should be available on Wednesday. Eleven classes have already been converted to distance learning.
The numbers of the PCR tests from Monday and from those who, as recommended, already used “Alles Gurgelt” at the weekend are already available from Vienna. On Monday, 139,000 PCR tests were completed in the federal capital, of which 639 were positive, according to the office of the responsible city councilor for education, Christoph Wiederkehr (NEOS). So that’s more than twice as many as in the antigen tests. In addition, a total of 136,000 PCR tests were carried out over the weekend, 1,354 of which produced a positive result.
Kindergarten children and their parents also followed the call to test on the weekend. Of 17,000 samples, 121 were positive here. Education Councilor Wiederkehr thanked them in a statement for their participation. We know that the current time is very stressful for teaching staff, parents and children. “That is why we support everyday school life with a comprehensive network of PCR tests and protective measures and provide as much security as possible. We are resolutely pursuing our goal: safe and open schools.”
Three tests a week
As before the holidays, tests will continue to be carried out there on a regular basis. In the current safety phase, all students take three corona tests per week. The more meaningful PCR tests are currently used once a week in six federal states and twice a week nationwide from January 17th. In Vienna, Lower Austria and Upper Austria, and thus half of the schoolchildren, PCR tests are already carried out twice a week.
In addition, there is a continuous mask requirement (from the upper level and for all teachers FFP2), school events are prohibited. The presence requirement is still lifted, so pupils can study at home with the parents’ apology.
Distance learning in two or more cases
The procedure for identified corona cases remains unchanged: if there is only one case in a class, classroom teaching continues, but the other children must then be tested daily for five days. If another corona case occurs in this class within three days, the system will switch to distance learning. The new general rules also severely restrict the quarantine of students; due to the continuous mask requirement, only those who have tested positive are usually quarantined.
If classes are distance learning, digital lessons should take place according to the timetable if possible or, where this is not possible, the children should be provided with work packages. For normal lessons in the classroom, the teachers were most recently requested by decree to continue to take into account “the pandemic-related exposure” of the children and adolescents in teaching and performance assessments, which is sometimes very different from region to region. This is all the more relevant as the school news (commonly known as “semester reports”) is already being distributed in February.
As before, schoolwork only has to be rescheduled if more than half of the semester has been missed (e.g. due to quarantine) – unless that doesn’t work out in the semester in question and a reliable assessment of performance is possible in another way. External examinations take place as well as school enrollment and aptitude tests for admission to certain types of schools.
Source: Nachrichten
