The right to "an education"
Firsthand accounts from Ukrainian moms in Vienna about their (pretty shocking) children's experiences with the Austrian education system, so far.
Of all the topics running through my mind right now, education was not on the top of my list. But then yesterday I — cannot remember for what reason — opened a mommy chat on Telegram of Ukrainian mothers in Vienna, and began to read their heated discussion about all the issues they and their children are having with the Austrian school system and its rules right now. And although I covered this topic recently here (Jan 13 see section “School”), I think it warrants a separate post, given what I heard yesterday.
Quick background: Austrian law states that all children aged 6 must be in formal education. Home schooling is legal but only if it follows the Austrian curriculum. Opting to stay home and do only Ukrainian school online is not a legal option. Although many mothers of children of various ages begged for an exception, it was generally not granted. Therefore, many Ukrainian children at the moment are struggling to balance two schools: Austrian in-person, which is best case a place a normal Austrian classroom with kids who speak German, worst case an “integration” class of children of a range of ages where German is supposed to be taught to non-native speakers but in reality it sounds like little if any learning happens, and Ukrainian online school, if the parent has decided the child needs to continue his/her studies in Ukraine, too. Obviously the issues are different for parents of six year olds vs. fourteen year olds, but the law remains the same. Wiggling out is not an option. Furthermore, once a child is fifteen, they are dropped like a hot potato, from an legal perspective, and you don’t have to attend any school at all in Austria after ninth grade if you don’t want to. One additional complication: the school system splits kids after fourth grade into gymnasium (competitive to get into, academic path to university), and middle school (not competitive, not a path to university, high proportion of students who do not speak German at home in Vienna). In other words, the school system in Austria is outdated and discriminatory and basically decides when a child is ten whether or not he is worth investing another eight years of education in. Austrians get to be doctors and lawyers, the rest of you can learn plumbing, drive buses, and work in retail. You get the idea. I write sarcastically, but not really.
If that all wasn’t depressing enough, a recent (2018) negative addition to the concept of “integration” (an oxymoron when you see how the authorities actually try to approach it — I would argue actively work against it) is the introduction of the infamous MIKA-D test, a so-called “test” of a non-native German speaking child’s knowledge of the German language which he/she must pass in order to transfer from a “foreigner” classroom to a “normal” classroom following the Austrian curriculum. I was shocked when I saw these pictures for the first time this morning. Online, you will find very little information on the structure and grading of the test itself (Ukrainian moms are frantically trying to figure out what their kids should study to pass!). I am sure the is also by design.
I am not a teacher, nor a pedagogue. I consider myself able to speak German to do almost everything I need to do in daily life here in Wien. I am absolutely certain I would not pass a MIKA-D test.
Every expert will tell you the fastest way for a child to learn a foreign language is to throw them in a classroom where they are surrounded by it and let them absorb it all. Plus provide extra support. In the case of these “integration” or “Ukrainian” classes, Austria appears to be doing neither. It is understandable given this stressful situation that moms would prefer for keep their kids home and do online school in Ukraine, particularly if they have no plans to stay in Austria long-term. The law was written assuming immigrants arrive in Austria for good. In the case of “temporary protection” for Ukrainians in the EU, the situation is fundamentally different. This situation would call for a flexible solution, and I suppose it I no surprise but certainly a disappointment that the Austrian authorities and education ministry failed to come up with one.
Before I share the firsthand accounts, I would also like to share what one mom wrote last night, as I think it really perfectly sums up the contrasting views you will hear from Ukrainians in Austria:
I understood one thing in talking to our moms. For some, the war became an “opportunity”, an opportunity to live somewhere where they had wanted to go for a while. And they only see the positives in everything here: medicine, education, social life. For others, the war is a huge stress and they don’t want to live anywhere but at home, where everything is familiar and your own. And then there are those who are simply here and waiting, not understanding where to go or how. Therefore opinions will always differ and it is really difficult for us to all understand each other.
One mom of a five year old, from Hostomel, writes me she has two older sons (one of whom is playing football in Austria), she is herself a math teacher, and she categorically does not want her daughter to start school here at age six in a language she does not understand. She is worried her daughter will then learn nothing in first grade and have to repeat the year and have a very negative impression of what school is from the beginning. This mom says she will go back to Ukraine rather than have her daughter start first grade here.
Another mom, also from Kyiv, has twins. Both are five now. The transition to kindergarten here in Austria was very difficult even though the children happily attended kindergarten in Ukraine. There have been many tears and months of adaptation. There has even been a psychologist involved. The twins will be just six in September, they still do not understand German well, and there are very little resources to support language learning at this age. The mom explains she sees it as dangerous to leave kids in a school where they cannot communicate at all, cannot explain they need the toilet, etc. She is worried about placing her children under additional stress on top of all the stress the war and relocation has caused. When the mom asked the Austrian school director what will happen if her children cannot cope with 1st grade in German, she was told — don’t worry, they can always repeat the year. This mom is very worried that she may cause her kids to hate school entirely if she follows what is expected of her by Austria.
They can always repeat the year. This shocked me when we first moved to Austria but now it no longer does. Repeating the year is considered a “normal” solution for kids who can’t “keep up”. Yes, really.
The twins’ mom has an older son. He is in sixth grade in Ukraine, in a special class with extra math, English and IT. Here he is in a gymnasium. Here her son is forced to attend school and do fifth grade for the second time, where the math is two years behind where he is, English is three years behind, they only just started IT. In order no to fall further behind, she makes him attend Saturday Ukrainian school here in Vienna. If the law didn't force him to attend an Austrian school, he would do entirely Ukrainian school online during the first half of the day. It has been almost a year, and the teacher says the boy is at A1 German. Which means if he doesn't pass the MIKA-D test, they will put him in fifth grade for the third time. Mom says he goes to gymnasium here only because the law says he has to.
Another mom wrote several letters to Austria’s education ministry. She says she thinks the Austrians underestimate the Ukrainian education system and that most of the moms who arrived here have several university degrees themselves. She asks why Austrians don’t see Ukrainians as other Europeans, but rather put them in the same bucket as refugees coming from non-European countries with varying levels of education systems. She explains: we are only here temporarily, we could arrange for extra courses for our kids, it is ridiculous to hold children back for several years in the same grade.
Moms write children of various ages (grades one through four) are thrown together in a classroom and this is a special class to “learn German”. But it sounds like there is more arts and crafts like in kindergarten than learning German. And the children are told not to use the bathroom during they breaks, not to make noise in the hallways which might disrupt the kids in “normal” classrooms. It does not sound like German is being taught intensively in these mixed classrooms, rather they are a form of babysitting which no one asked for.
My daughter is nine. She has been going to an Austrian school for half days since November. She is in a class with Austrian kids. She is having a really hard time learning German. They gave her an individual teacher, but it is only one hour per week. She learned the body parts, clothing, etc. There is no extra support, no special textbook, we don’t see what homework is being assigned to the other kids. There is supposed to be English once a week but she only had it one time so far. I am so afraid she will simply forget what she already learned. How many years will she have to spend in third grade? We could give her extra support, but school is from 8:00 - 15:30. She is really tired and psychologically it is hard. She feels lonely. The other children ignore her. She is always alone at recess and in the breaks. Because she is so exhausted, I cannot force her to do more in the evenings. She only has energy to eat, learn a few more words of German in an app, and go to bed.
Moms are writing letters to private gymnasium, asking if there might be space. The answer is usually no. One mom writes, what should we do with our teenagers, simply let them grow stupid? Those of you with little kids, she writes, you can at least try to switch schools…
The thing with the MIKA-D test is ridiculous. My son is already 14. According to their system, he should be in ninth grade, but he is an eight grade “integration” class. In Ukraine he went to a gymnasium with extra English, he speaks English well, he took part in city Olympics and won prizes in math and physics. When he was 12, he taught himself Python, Javascript, and then C-sharp. Now he makes his own games in Unity. He has now reached the level of junior programmer. And how he is sitting in an “integration” class where they divided the group into “stronger” and “weaker”. So he gets to school, the teacher spends the first two lessons working with the weaker ones, and they, the stronger ones, just sit there. So I hired a German tutor. And he also has online Ukrainian school. He didn’t pass the MIKA-D test, I understand because when he gave his answers, the teacher made marks on two charts, correct or incorrect. He had half-half. So basically, it is totally subjective. And no, the teacher is not a native Austrian. It is a joke that you have to go to these pseudo-school, grow stupid, play Uno, color things in. I am in shock.
Another mom suggests, after reading all this, to try to transfer to a private Austrian school. Her child spent two weeks in a such an “integration” class, and they panicked and began writing letters everywhere. They now travel 40 minutes to school every morning, but her eight year-old son is happy in an ordinary Austrian classroom. Of course this option isn’t available to most — private schools cost at least €200 per month and most won’t have free space for kids with little German. They are not equipped to deal with large groups of children arriving needing German support. The state schools should be doing this. From the sound of it, they are failing. These integration classes are a terrible invention and should be scrapped. They have been widely criticised by experts and opposition politicians, but the ministry of education is holding onto them, for now.
Taking a look at all of this — and adding in my own experiences as a mother with three children in the Austrian education system — it makes me think all of this is designed to keep the “good jobs and opportunities” for native German speakers and keep foreigners “where they belong” i.e. doing the jobs no one else wants to do. There is a mentality here in Austria which has emerged over decades that immigrants are here to do the manual labor Austrians don’t want to do themselves. Certain jobs are reserved only for native speakers. You can speak grammatically perfect German but you have an accent? Hmmmm.
The Ukrainians are presenting an interesting challenge to all of this because a) most of them do not plan on staying and b) they are coming from an education system much stronger and more demanding than Austria’s in the first place. These moms are broadly extremely well educated. They are very keen to manage their children’s education. They do view school as something more than weekday babysitting and getting good enough grades so you can go to gymnasium. They have expectations, and are frustrated by a broken system forcing them to waste their kids’ time in settings which are clearly, for the most part, not promoting learning of German. Or at least not well.
My son is 15. They don’t let him do only online Ukrainian school. Does a single Austrian child spend two hours getting to school one direction? They should really respect each child’s right to achieve the best education for him/herself. There is a difference between simply going to school and receiving an education. Our kids are only here temporarily. My kid wants to go to university, he needs to study, and not to be held after school to tidy up the classroom. He wastes two hours one way getting to and from Austrian school. This makes him tired for Ukrainian online school. I wish they would lift this requirement. The kids are already stressed out from the war and moving here. It is only causing more psychological damage.
My child is 14. We received a letter that we must sign up for school. We are delaying it as long as we can. Online Ukrainian school works great. There is no point for him to go to local school. We will pack up and go home for good soon.
They forced my child to repeat fourth grade. I thought it would help for German. But the reality is zero. They spent class cutting out hedgehogs and gluing them to apples. That is nice of course but she did this in kindergarten. With such little progress in German, it would be a huge risk to repeat the year for a third time. We began to study on our own. Then they appeared out of nowhere with their MIKA-D test already. Did you even teach the kids anything or tell them about it before putting a test in front of them? So they could pass the test?
I went to the school director who said that that is their program and she cannot do anything about it. They are also gluing things, supposedly learning German. The English is like our third grade in Ukraine. They also have the history of Austria, PE, and cooking. Question — how can one school be ok and another so bad if the program is supposedly the same for everyone?
Oh! You are lucky. We have NOTHING else other than gluing hedgehogs and Christmas trees, and PE was only once in two months. He is in third grade.
My godson received a letter a few times about mandatory school attendance. Today a formal letter arrived from Stadt Wien Department of Collection & Enforcement Service! Luckily, the boy already returned to Ukraine. This was one of the reasons why they left Austria.
I type this as news of repeated missile strikes across Ukraine this morning. Can you imagine a teenager having to return to war rather than waste his time being forced to attend a school he does not need to continue his further education? With legal threats?!
This is how crazy it all is. The Austrian education system is broken and it is also inflexible, and puts all “foreigners” in one bucket, unless of course you happen to speak native English, then you have a few more public school options available to you, but even then, any child who is a non-native speaker of German must prove themselves first to the teachers.
Does it also strike you that none of this has anything to do with education or logic or the children’s well being, all to do with control? You are here, and now you will do as we say.
I think it would be better for the children to do Ukrainian school online and then have extra German course say after 3pm. Today my son told me he would rather go back to Ukraine and do his lessons from the bomb shelter than here in safety…
My daughter is nine and was told to repeat second grade for the second time. Each morning she goes like to “hard labor”. The teacher sometimes raises his/her voice at the children, and yes, he/she can pull by the arm too. I spoke with the director about this, it was an ok conversation, but now the child is afraid! Re the MIKA-D test, if she doesn’t pass she will have to do second grade for the third time!
The MIKA-D test is a joke. In my son’s class there is a boy, not from Ukraine, he is in first grade for the third time because he cannot pass the test…
Ok, I read the whole discussion. My child goes to Austrian school. Is learning German, repeating English because the curriculum here is weaker. The rest is kind of meh, I think he misses 60% of the Ukrainian curriculum because he is tired, both morally and physically. Morally because he sits in lessons he doesn’t understand. I already understand we will return to Ukraine and make the tutors very rich. I don’t add anything on top now as it would be too much. The child doesn’t have weekends; he spends them doing homework.
I could keep going but I think you all get the idea. This is all very, very worrying. You hear the same things over and over. Bad enough that these kids experienced war and had to flee their homes — the education experience in Austria sounds very unhappy and unfruitful for most of these Ukrainian kids. Yes, this is just a snapshot. Yes, this is just Vienna. Surely, there are kids who are happy in their new schools. But this alone is very worrying if this is a trend. These “integration” classes seem to hold kids back by design. And perhaps the Ukrainian moms are the first group to really speak out loudly against them because they have such high expectations when it comes to their kids’ education.
I know how challenging ordinary Austrian classrooms can be. I know someones, often, unfortunately, people choosing teaching as a profession who probably shouldn’t. I know the system teaches rote memorisation rather than independent thought (as the Habsburgs surely intended back in the day), but I honestly did not expect so many Ukrainians and other immigrant kids would be essentially wasting their time not really learning German being so separated from other kids. I am a little bit shocked and very disappointed to learn all of this.
I share not because I believe in change (I’m far too cynical for that), but because I think is important for these perspectives to be out there in the public domain.
I do not plan to stay in Austria. I really wish that they could make in-person school attendance voluntary for those of us who do not see a future for ourselves here, and who will not live here. And yes, I would be also curious what will be here in 15 years with such a huge number of uneducated immigrants.