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Teachers expect a “high degree of normality” in the fall

Dealing with cases of infection in schools remains a major challenge, but there are better tools and more experience than last autumn and vaccinations would also improve the starting position. He still expects classes or schools to be closed.

Education Minister Heinz Famann (VP) will not present his plans for the coming school year in detail until next week, but the key points are already known: In addition to vaccination appeals to teaching staff and parents, he is also relying on the increased use of meaningful PCR tests, if necessary also on air filters and mask wearers. Monitoring of the infection rate in schools and an early warning system are also planned.

For Kimberger this is a practicable way to start the new school year “with the appropriate security measures, but as normal as possible”. The safety phase after the start of school, in which frequent tests should take place, is particularly important to the teachers’ representatives. “From this point of view we can – with the necessary caution, but nevertheless – look confidently into the autumn,” said the trade unionist to the APA, who emphasized that the measures were closely coordinated between the union and the ministry.

“There is no substitute for a presence business”

The general line that school closings should only be the last step, even with high numbers of infections, is supported by Kimberger despite the more contagious Delta variant. Kimberger expects that there will be regional measures such as segregation of classes or school closings here and there. “But I hope that we won’t have to take any measures in the field again and, for example, have to go completely into distance learning or work in shifts, because it turned out relatively quickly that there is no substitute for on-site operation. And there is less work about the teaching of the material and rather the school as a social structure. “

Kimberger has nothing more to do with a compulsory vaccination for teachers, which is currently being discussed in the media, but the government is not currently considering this anyway. The teacher representative emphasizes that the vaccination rate among teachers is already very high; according to projections by the union, 80 percent of this group are immunized. It is not for nothing that the teachers have called for vaccination offers so vehemently, says Kimberger, who wants to continue to rely on conviction and motivation. In the education department, it is estimated that 75 percent of teachers are vaccinated.

Official figures on the vaccination rate among teaching staff are still missing. Education Minister Famann had announced that he wanted to collect this together with the Ministry of Health. In practice, however, merging the teacher data from the education department with the vaccination data from the electronic health record (ELGA) of the health ministry is not that easy. The health department is currently checking whether it is legally possible to transfer the corresponding data sets. Even then, the technical implementation would take some time due to different system requirements, according to the Ministry of Health at the APA request.

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