Teachers too expensive

The Austrian state auditor has criticised the sharp increase in the cost of teachers in lower Austria.

It said that with the teaching costs for compulsory schools alone the increase was around 21 percent.

The report on teaching staff costs has now been presented to the regional government.

According to the report the region has overstepped the agreed financing plan with the national government. The problem was that the regional government was entitled to claim back from the state the costs of putting short-term young teachers into jobs that were actually offered to much older and more qualified and therefore more expensive teachers.
That created a budget deficit of 33 million Euro.

In 2007 in lower Austria the number of pupils in the class was limited to 25 – which meant that more teachers needed to be recruited to make classes smaller according to NÖ education representative Karl Wilfing (ÖVP).

He said there were also costs for the new middle schools – and therefore the state auditor criticism was not valid.