Wiederkehr on ORF

Education minister wants parents to pay

As City Councillor for Education, Widerkehr made demands that he can now fulfill as Minister of Education ...(Bild: SEPA Media)

For years, Christoph Wiederkehr made the same demand to the federal government as Vienna's education councillor: parents of "problem pupils" should be fined. Now he is the federal government himself - and is sticking to the plan on ORF. 

"Parents help shape school careers. Parental work therefore makes an important contribution to a child's educational career. It doesn't work without parents!", Wiederkehr (NEOS) went into the exchange of blows with the then Minister of Education Martin Polaschek (ÖVP) at the beginning of 2024.

At the time, he called for the legal possibility for the federal states to impose administrative fines if parents of "problem pupils" do not attend parents' evenings, consultation days and personal discussions, appointments and school social work measures if required. "Everyone who lives here also has to live with the teachers," he reiterated the plan in Time in Picture 2 - and also commented on the cell phone ban and family reunification. 

The pink politician recalled times when "up to 400 children came to Vienna from Syria and Afghanistan in just one month". That was "a whole school". In order not to overload the educational institutions again, precautions must now be taken. Whether this is possible in accordance with the law? That is "unclear", as the EU would first have to accept this as a state of emergency. - Which has never been the case before. But Wiederkehr is certain: many of the children have never seen the inside of a school, and the housing and job markets are also at their limits. 

The ban on cell phones, which the Minister of Education had already announced during the day, is to be extended to tablets and smartwatches and will apply until the eighth grade, as Wiederkehr announced on social media: "After intensive discussions with teachers, pupils and experts, one thing is certain: there will be an Austria-wide ban on cell phones in schools until the end of the eighth grade."