A total of 150,000 devices purchased by the Ministry of Education with a total value of 250 million euros are to be distributed. Education Minister Heinz Fassmann (ÖVP), who had traveled to the Ramsauer Gymnasium in Linz on this occasion, spoke of the largest investment in digitization in the field of school education to date. Then came praise or criticism from different quarters.
Deliveries will initially start in Vienna, Lower Austria, Upper Austria and Burgenland. By the end of the week, 65 schools should be supplied with 8,000 devices. A total of 93 percent of the schools in question take part in the campaign for pupils in the fifth and sixth grades – the prerequisite was the development of a concept for how the devices should be used in the classroom and the approval of the school partnership committees consisting of parents, teachers and pupils . In some schools, however, not all of the relevant classes are included.
For the devices, the schools could choose between Windows notebooks, Windows tablets, iPads, Android tablets and refurbished devices. However, only the same type of device is used at one location, and a swap exchange should be set up in the event of a change of school. There are delays with the Windows tablets, which 22 percent of the locations opted for: In a Europe-wide invitation to tender, there was no offer with an adequate price, which is why a new tender was made.
Devices can also be used privately
The devices become the property of the children and can therefore also be used in private. Your deductible is 25 percent of the purchase price. With an average cost of 400 euros and a period of use of four years, that is 25 euros per year, according to the ministry’s calculation. Families with little money can be exempted from the deductible.
In addition to the students, all teachers in the relevant classes at AHS also receive the appropriate laptops or tablets from the Ministry of Education. In middle and special schools there are only three devices per participating class. In order to equip all teachers with it, the state of Upper Austria is purchasing an additional 2,500 end devices. A total of eight million euros are earmarked for the digitization of schools in the state budget, calculated Governor Thomas Stelzer. His deputy Christine Haberlander (also ÖVP) argued as an education councilor, “the www is as important for the students as the abc”. Like the ministry, the state is also accompanying the project with educational initiatives. Among other things, there is further training and additional training for teachers.
Criticism from the SPÖ
For the SPÖ education spokeswoman Petra Vorderwinkler, the “failure of Fassmann with laptops “. Because the delivery is delayed contrary to the previous plans. The schools are again left completely alone:” Who should take care of it if an app does not load, the battery is spinning or the Internet does not work? “, she asked There is neither personnel nor money for maintenance. In addition, Vorderwinkler suggests that the end devices should be free of charge for parents, following the example of the free textbook.
NEOS: Further measures are necessary
The NEOS education spokeswoman Martina Künsberg criticized that handing out devices does not yet make a digitization offensive in schools. In addition, other essential measures are needed, such as compulsory digitalization training for teachers, adapted room concepts and new forms of teaching.
The start of the delivery is a special day for the ÖVP student union because it implements one of its longest demands on the subject of digitization. In one and a half years, what has been neglected in the past ten years will be made up for.
The Allianz Bildungsmedien – an association of providers in Austria – pointed out: “It is not the technology that makes schools, but the educational content”. Schools need a balance between new technologies on the one hand and indispensable content on the other. It is precisely this balance that the providers of professional educational media could achieve. Innovative, suitable digital teaching materials that meet all legal requirements are, however, associated with high additional costs. It therefore needs an appropriate financial basis.
