Three-Quarters of Viennese Middle School Students Speak No German at Home

New statistics from Austria reveal that more than three-quarters of students in Vienna’s middle schools do not speak German at home, a figure which has prompted political outcry and demands for urgent changes in the education system.

According to Statistics Austria’s STATcube, only 8,479 of Vienna’s 26,816 middle school students use German as their primary language, while 76 percent predominantly speak other languages.

In specific districts, the numbers soar above 90 percent, with areas like Margareten (95.4 percent), Hernals (92.2 percent), and Alsergrund (91.2 percent) reporting the highest proportions of students speaking languages other than German at home.

The figures are sparking debates over the impact on academic performance, teacher retention, and integration efforts within schools.

The Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) criticized the city’s educational and integration policies, pointing to what they describe as “decades of looking the other way.” Education policy spokesperson Harald Zierfuß called for “sustainable and structurally effective measures” from the ruling Social Democrats (SPÖ) and the liberal NEOS, warning that language barriers are creating “unsolvable challenges” for schools in Vienna.

Zierfuß added that Vienna has some of the country’s highest rates of teacher turnover and classroom violence, exacerbated by language difficulties, and noted that a third of Vienna’s first graders lack sufficient German skills to begin regular schooling, despite two-thirds being Austrian-born.

The Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) blamed Vienna’s Deputy Mayor and City Councilor for Education, Christoph Wiederkehr, accusing him of neglecting his responsibilities. FPÖ local chairman Maximilian Kurass, a member of the Vienna Assembly, called for a “competent city council” to address what he described as a “broken education system.”

In July, Remix News reported how teachers are quitting schools in Vienna in droves, with dozens of educators quitting every day due to the extremely stressful environments featuring mostly migrant children.

According to teachers’ union member Thomas Krebs, teachers are fleeing Vienna’s compulsory schools “in droves.” However, the Vienna state government does not offer any useful ideas on how to deal with the increasing influx of students.

“On one peak day, I even received 20 reports of staff terminating (their contract) for the coming school year,” he stated at the time.

A government-produced integration report published in July showed that 27.2 percent of Austrian residents are of foreign origin: first-generation immigrants or born in Austria to foreign parents, up from 19.4 percent in 2013.