After six weeks of long vacation, there should be a legal right to three weeks of summer school for children of compulsory school age. The summer school should not be compulsory, but it should be offered at every school location. Difference to the current model of the Ministry of Education: This takes place (also voluntarily) only in the last two weeks of vacation, and students can also be assigned to a location across schools.
As in the current model, teachers, students and possibly fellows of initiatives such as “Teach for Austria” should teach voluntarily – but the remuneration would be different. In return, the teachers could receive a week’s vacation during the year (overtime is currently being paid out), and the prospective teachers and fellows receive payment. Students are currently only credited with ECTS points for their studies. The model in Upper Austria is to be financed from state funds. The effort is determined by how the offer is accepted and can therefore not yet be calculated.
Education is inherited
Gerstorfer is concerned with equal opportunities and fairness. Education is inherited in Austria, the summer school can compensate for that. “The cost of tutoring is skyrocketing,” but not all parents can afford it. In the three-week summer school, schools can be rethought apart from frontal teaching. The model offers parents, especially mothers, the chance to work more. It is a “win situation for everyone” and she hopes that a broader discourse will emerge from it, said the state party leader.
Kern – Austrian Chancellor from May 2016 to December 2017 – explained, based on his own career, how tight it is to decide what will become of a child, whether it will go to high school or not. “The education system in Austria is not good at enabling social advancement,” emphasized the now entrepreneur. With only half of the expenditure for corona measures, namely 20 million euros, you can support every child for 20 years with better care, the 6 + 3 model, an all-day school. The summer holidays are a “stunt”, especially for single parents.
Whether the model will find a majority in Upper Austria “has to be discussed,” said Gerstorfer. The flexibility at the schools in the past 18 months is a guarantee that it is possible. The 6 + 3 family summer plan is feasible from next year. She also called for schools to be upgraded with better working conditions for teaching staff, modern classrooms and laptops for children from the third grade.
Kern: “I am not giving up my conviction”
Kern explained his motivation to appear politically again for a long time with the topic and his appreciation for Birgit Gerstorfer. She “is sensible, factual, consistent and full of passion.” He does not believe that ex-politicians should stay out of it. “I am not giving up my conviction, it will stay that way for a lifetime.” The SP Upper Austria is an example of constructive cooperation. “I hope that on September 26th it will be rewarded for the good work done.”
In politics there are phases of ups and downs, “now we are seeing the success of a mega-production that consists of letting hot air rise through the water every day. People have had enough of that,” he concluded. He did not want to say more about Austrian domestic politics, because he “does not follow what is happening in detail”. The appearance in Linz is also his only one in the state election campaign.
