The new school year begins Monday for around 502,000 students in Vienna, Lower Austria, and Burgenland. This includes around 42,500 1st graders taking their seats in a classroom for the first time. This year, there are new curricula in the first classes of elementary schools, AHS lower secondary schools, and middle schools. Another innovation: the nursing schools are no longer school experiments but part of the regular school system.
There is still a shortage of trained teachers at the schools. For this reason, the schools again rely on student teachers, lateral entrants, overtime, and, in some cases, retired teachers. However, Education Minister Martin Polaschek has promised that these measures will enable every lesson to be taught. The new school year will start one week later in the remaining federal states. This year, there will be a total of 1.15 million students, 97,000 of whom will be in first grade.
