Parent Representatives Reject Better Mixing of Schools Through Student Allocation

Paul Haschka from the umbrella association of parent associations criticizes that children are sometimes sent to hotspot schools against their wishes to achieve better mixing. He opposes the "forced allocation" of children and instead calls for good schools for everyone. The parent representation supports that children from educationally disadvantaged families also receive a good education, "but this should not lead to children being assigned to unpopular schools they did not want."

Parent Representatives: Popular Schools Should Grow

Instead, locations that are particularly popular due to their better offerings (good all-day care, talent promotion, friendly management and teachers, etc.) should be allowed to take in more children. For this, they could use premises from schools in close proximity that are less in demand, especially in cities. "The more popular school gets two to three more classes and grows, the unpopular school has two to three fewer classes and gives up space," according to Haschka's proposal. He advocates for the support and expansion of well-functioning teaching teams and for quickly implementable innovations.

Currently, the place of residence generally determines which compulsory school a child attends. Although one can apply for a change of school district, the assigned and desired school or the respective municipalities as school maintainers must agree. In larger municipalities, several schools can be combined into one district, cities like Vienna, Klagenfurt, and Linz, for example, are a single school district. If there are more applications than places at the desired school, they are usually ranked according to criteria such as siblings at the school and distance from the residence. In practice, this leads to, among other things, false registrations of children to improve the chances of getting into the desired school, as a study for Vienna has shown.

Hotspot School Not Due to Parents, But System

Haschka rejects the notion that parents, through their intense efforts for their desired school placement, could contribute to the creation of hotspot schools. Parents would always enroll their children at the location that seems best suited for their child. The system of popular and unpopular schools is rather solidified by the system itself, because children whose parents are not as familiar with the schools and those who no longer get a place at their actual desired school are assigned to a less popular school by the education directorate or municipality.

The "Opportunity Bonus" planned by the federal government should therefore only be implemented in conjunction with more freedom of choice. Through this, schools where particularly many children and adolescents do not speak German well and have parents with low educational qualifications should receive more money. If schools have not yet created attractive offerings that make the location popular, "not much will be achieved even with a little more money."

Parent Representatives for "Opportunity Bonus" for Child Instead of School

Moreover, in a hotspot school, it is not the school that is disadvantaged, but the respective student who comes from an educationally disadvantaged or socially disadvantaged family. The "Opportunity Bonus" should therefore be linked not to the location but to the child, and every school should receive slightly more resources for children from educationally disadvantaged families, demands Haschka.

Most recently (school year 2022/23), in the social index developed by the Chamber of Labor (AK), which the government wants to use as a guide for their "Opportunity Bonus," almost every seventh student fell into level 7 with "very high support needs." Considering students at levels 6 and 5 as well, almost a third of children and adolescents need more intensive support from the school. In practice, children from disadvantaged families particularly often end up in schools with many other children with high support needs.

A recent study by the Institute for Advanced Studies has shown that children from a disadvantaged environment significantly benefit from better mixing of schools: their chance of graduating increases, and the risk of dropping out decreases. However, the less favorable the social mix at a location, the worse the educational opportunities for all - even for high achievers or children of academics. According to the study, however, young people from privileged families are also significantly more successful at schools with a high social index.

This article has been automatically translated, read the original article here.