In response to an unprecedented influx of school-aged asylum seekers, Austria’s Education Minister Christoph Wiederkehr (NEOS) has announced the implementation of a one-semester orientation course for newly arriving children and teenagers.
The move aims to ease their integration into the school system and address challenges posed by their lack of prior formal education, but the opposition Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) insists the move manages the symptoms and fails to address the root cause of mass immigration.
Exxpress reported that between 2023 and 2024, a total of 22,266 schoolchildren, primarily from Syria, applied for asylum in Austria, with 18,062 receiving it — an all-time high. This surge placed immense strain on the Austrian education system, with an average of 174 new pupils — equivalent to eight full classrooms — arriving in the country every week.
The main driver of this influx has been family reunification, leading to an unprecedented rise in student numbers. Many of these children have never attended school before, having spent years in refugee camps in Turkey or Lebanon. Teachers and school administrators, particularly in metropolitan areas, have found themselves overwhelmed. In Vienna alone, 4,000 additional primary school children joined the system during the 2022/23 academic year, requiring the creation of new classes and pushing educators to the brink of burnout.
The new Austrian coalition government announced last week its plan to impose a temporary “zero quota” on family reunifications, a step officials say is necessary to address the ongoing asylum crisis and the strain on Austria’s social systems. However, opposition politicians claim those in power can’t be trusted to implement the policy effectively, having held office without success on the issue for years.
To mitigate the strain on schools, Minister Wiederkehr is introducing orientation classes designed to prepare migrant children for the Austrian school environment. Many of these students not only do not speak any German but are also unfamiliar with basic literacy and numeracy. Some have never held a pen or followed structured school rules, and many fail to show respect for female teachers due to cultural differences.
Under the new system, children will first attend a semester-long orientation class where they will acquire basic German language skills to facilitate communication, fundamental school skills, such as writing, using scissors, and following classroom etiquette, and social values including respect, equality, and tolerance.
Following this preparatory phase, students will transition into either a regular classroom or a German remedial class, depending on their progress.
“This is a way to introduce young people without school experience to learning,” said Wiederkehr. “The German remedial class will be the next step for most of them. But even there, teaching German is difficult if students have never sat in a classroom before. The orientation class prepares them for this and thus relieves both the regular and the German remedial classes.”
The decision on whether a child attends an orientation class will be based on an initial assessment interview evaluating prior schooling and literacy levels. While the Ministry of Education has yet to determine the number of orientation classes required in the upcoming school year, it is actively developing a curriculum and teaching materials. School psychologists and integration services will also be involved in the initiative.
While the government views orientation classes as a necessary step to manage the education crisis, opposition parties, particularly the FPÖ, have strongly criticized the measure. FPÖ General Secretary Michael Schnedlitz dismissed the plan as “mere symptom control,” arguing that it does not address the root problem of overburdened schools fuelled by mass immigration.
“The first commandment against the excessive demands on schools by pupils without knowledge of German and illiteracy is an immediate stop to illegal mass immigration, as the FPÖ has long demanded with its ‘Fortress Austria.'” said Schnedlitz in a press release on Wednesday.
Remix News previously reported on a teachers’ union report published last October which revealed not only systematic issues like language barriers, but also extreme incidents, including assaults on teachers, situations where parents of schoolchildren asked a teacher to wear a burqa, and even the presence of mock executions in Viennese classrooms.
One middle school headmistress, who wanted to remain anonymous for safety reasons, was cited in the report as saying: “There are always difficulties, especially with Syrian families,” adding that most of them don’t speak any German at all.
Between 80 and 85 percent of the more than 800 students at her school do not speak German as their mother tongue.
“Immigration has always existed, but this is something completely different now. The Arab communities are a real challenge for us at the moment,” she said.
The local government in Lower Austria, of which the FPÖ is in coalition with the ÖVP, proposed in January plans to withdraw family allowance benefits for migrant families whose children go to school without learning German.
“If children don’t know a single word of German, there is no money. It’s that simple,” said Edith Mühlberghuber, the FPÖ family spokeswoman in Lower Austria. “This imported language problem must end. Financial sanctions could serve as a language boost, and if not, then the state will save itself a lot of money.”
