Year-round kindergarten

“Why isn’t this available elsewhere?”

Mom Janine Aigner with her two children Marie and Ben.

(Bild: Reinhard Judt)

Since October, there has been a free year-round kindergarten in Burgenland. This is intended to relieve the burden on parents and help them to reconcile work and family life more easily - with success!

Job and children - a balancing act for many parents that is not always so easy to reconcile. Good childcare is a crucial aspect of this. Free kindergarten has been available in Burgenland since 2019. It was recently extended to year-round kindergarten.

Savings of 250 euros
For Janine Aigner, who moved from Wiener Neustadt to Marz with her husband in 2016, this makes everyday life much easier - both in terms of looking after her two children Marie and Ben and financially. "In Wiener Neustadt you would have to pay extra for afternoon care, but in Marz it's free. You only have to pay the handicraft fee and the money for lunch," says the mother of two. She estimates that the offer saves the family more than 250 euros a month.

Satisfied with the opening hours
She picks up her children at 2.30 p.m. from Monday to Thursday and a little earlier on Fridays. However, childcare is offered until 4.30 pm. She is happy with the opening hours. "I bring the children at around 7.20 a.m. so that I can drive to work afterwards. We are always among the first," says Aigner. Her husband works full-time, she herself works part-time in Lower Austria. Without the free kindergarten offer, it is questionable whether she would be able to continue working part-time at all or whether she would need more hours to finance childcare, says the young mother. The fact that she didn't have to take extra leave for the semester break, for example, was also a relief.

"Why is that possible in Burgenland?"
Most of her friends and acquaintances have come to terms with the fact that kindergarten in Lower Austria is not free of charge. "But many are already asking themselves the question: why is this possible in Burgenland and not elsewhere?"

The right step
"Our aim is to make it as easy as possible for parents to combine work and family life and to ease the financial burden on them. This initiative by Governor Hans Peter Doskozil is a big step in the right direction," says Daniela Winkler, State Councillor for Education.