„Interpädagogica“ Eröffnungsansprache Bundesministerin Dr.in Sonja Hammerschmid

Dear President Seibert, dear educators, especially those of you who have come here to further your training at Interpädagogica — I am very pleased to welcome you today. It is always a very special concern of mine to exchange ideas with practitioners, to listen, to see, and to feel what is on your minds, how you are doing in your professional worlds, and what improvement suggestions come from your side so that we in politics can shape things very actively and well. I am delighted to be here. Interpädagogica has chosen two major themes — themes that truly occupy us greatly. The first impulse forum in the morning already discussed the topic of integration and migration very intensively.

What is really important to me is to say thank you — and the President also mentioned this, and it is also a very personal concern — to thank all the educators who immediately and wholeheartedly took on the task of welcoming these refugee children into their classes, who are enabling these children to arrive in our society, providing them with stability and enabling integration. This commitment cannot be valued highly enough. Thank you and respect to all of you who live and shape this every day. We still have a lot to do in the context of welcoming instruction, shaping integration of these children into school life and into our society more generally — we know that. But when I hear the wishes of the President, I must say: yes, it is clear to us that this is an enormous challenge, and we have responded to it with the integration pot two. It is completely clear to me that we cannot leave you alone. This year we have made 60 million available, and next year 80 million will be available — precisely to do what the President has called for: additional educators who deal with the topic of language, who convey language to these children so that they can be properly admitted into instruction at all, and so they can follow instruction in all other subjects.

Language is very close to our hearts, that is absolutely clear. But we have also increased the number of social workers. And I want to particularly emphasize that we have begun working with intercultural teams — and this is a very important factor in the context of welcoming and integrating people into society, and also in working with families. Because in these mobile teams, it is possible to combine linguistically competent people from the respective cultural backgrounds with literacy educators, psychologists, and social workers. I was personally present and was able to experience in what environments they work and how they shape welcoming and integration in society. I saw children sitting in a circle — these children arrive traumatized from individual refugee areas, some of whom are no longer even able to speak. These mobile teams work with these children in a completely different way, with different pedagogy — music instruments, pantomime — so that these children slowly come out of their shell and begin to interact with society again through another form of language. It was truly impressive to see. And these mobile teams are also impressive because they have language competence within their circles to work with parents who mostly cannot understand our language, cannot understand our culture, and understand nothing about what happens in our schools. This collaborative work with parents through intercultural teams is a very, very important factor, and we are ensuring these intercultural teams can continue to work together with you at the schools. We face challenges here, but I believe we are in a good position to meet them. It requires interaction between educators and my ministry, my team, to find out where things are still difficult and where we still need to do more — we rely on that. But while we are all striving to give you everything you need to shape instruction, welcoming, and integration well — we still have much to do.

The OECD has once again reminded us — not so much because of the recent refugee wave, but because intercultural diversity and migration have been accompanying us for a long time. Many cultures of the most diverse nature, most diverse mother tongues are completely normal in our classrooms. I was in a school just last week where they had 53 mother tongues. So we must succeed in much better integrating children with a migration background into the education system, in better strengthening their education and working along their talents. Because we see from the OECD data that our children of the second generation already born in Austria with a migration background have not yet reached the education level achieved in other countries. We are losing talent in our education system, and especially those with a migration background, even if they were already born in Austria. We must address this, and we must come up with solutions together.

Digital technologies have arrived in the middle of our society — the smartphones make it a lived reality. Digitalization and its revolution, a technological revolution, has arrived in our society. Digitalization has turned our labor market and our professional fields upside down. That means we must quickly adjust in the education sector, in the school sector, to learn to deal well with this digitalization and the technology we have, and to convey these competencies to young people. Even though we believe our children are already excellently prepared to work with these tools because they can push buttons — that is not digital education for me. They can perhaps use a different app, play a different game, but they must also learn to deal with technology in depth. I mean things like at least a basic technological understanding — coding is always a buzzword — but also learning to deal with the knowledge available through digital media and technologies. What does it mean, how can I evaluate content on the internet? How can I critically question whether something is true or false? What out there on the internet, as a young person, must I be careful with? We must teach them to handle this well, to question critically, and to distinguish what is real from what may be twisted or politically influenced. This critical questioning is a very, very substantial concern of mine regarding digitalization.

And when I talk about digitalization, I very quickly arrive at the topic of equal opportunity. Because we know that technology also brings much broader access to knowledge and much broader access to education. If we just look across the pond — in recent days it has caused quite some heartburn — but at the elite universities, the online courses offered over the internet have created an enormous response, in that these online courses suddenly became available to everyone, free of charge, and we know what enormous educational success these internet-based courses and seminars have generated. Digitalization thus really enables equitable access to knowledge and education in general, and we should not shut ourselves off from that. We must react in schools, and react as quickly as possible. We are not at the beginning — fortunately we are not at the beginning. In recent weeks and months I have been able to visit many truly wonderful schools that have already taken on the digital topic.

For example, the Neumarktschule am Laaer Berg in Vienna — I was able to visit last week, where we had provided tablet cases and essentially made the school an expert school, so they would know: how do I deal with technology, how do I convey new learning materials? And it was wonderful to see that this networking from school to school, from principal to principal, from educator to educator really works well. The children are in this instruction with full enthusiasm, as are the teachers. You can simply see what technology does when it is used properly — it motivates, it sparks creativity. If the learning materials are well-made, they are also interactive learning materials where tasks can be worked on in teams. Team skills, self-organization — two skills we desperately need in our society — are being well developed here.

Another example — yesterday at a gymnasium in the Feldgasse, we experienced how chemistry class can truly be made exciting. It was wonderful to see that both genders were well addressed, girls as well as boys. An app that makes the chemical world vivid and tangible in a 3D-rendered way, and that really helps the children learn in a completely relaxed way, with much motivation and enthusiasm. These tools we must use to convey knowledge, to convey teamwork, to convey self-organization, to inspire creativity. And above all, individualized learning is also possible — I have seen that in math class, where talents can be particularly supported, but also weaker students can be particularly helped, because these apps and applications function on different levels. We can teach gifted students on a completely different level while the teacher sees at a glance where each student stands, with students working simultaneously on different levels. This simply opens new chances and methods for personalized learning, individualized learning, and that is why this technology is truly a gain.

400 schools are already active in our Learning Education Network. We are working intensively to make this number grow very quickly, precisely through sharing knowledge in dealing with these new technologies and new learning materials. We want to expand this number to 2,000 locations by 2020. We still have a lot to do. Not all educators learn to deal with these materials and tools — not everyone is what you might call a digital native. That means we must also advance educator training accordingly. And as I said, dealing with content, ethical reflection — that is something we must particularly take on. Think of cyberbullying, think of hate sticks that have massively invaded our society. We must prepare young people to deal with this.

Education — and I thank you very much for that today — extremism prevention, education is absolutely central, and education is simply the most important lever, if I may put it that way, for labor market policy. And education is the most important lever for social policy as well. That means it is up to all of us together to shape education in the interest of the future of our country. Many thanks, and I wish you a truly exciting trade fair. I believe there is really a lot to discover in terms of new developments and new materials. I also wish you a good exchange in the spirit of discussion — how can we as a school system continue to develop? And I hope that many ideas will come back to me. Thank you very much.