On the initiative of director Gerhard Gangl, a learning house was founded in the Gänserndorf elementary school in 2014. 30 children are usually looked after there in the afternoon. In an interview with KURIER, Gangl explains why this is a successful project.
KURIER: The learning house was as good as closed for a year. Now children are only allowed to come in small groups. How has the past year affected the children?
Gerhard Gangl: You can tell from the performance. The number of children who fail the school year has increased significantly. Not only the learning house, but also the reading mentors, who are mostly older than 60 years, have disappeared. As a school, we tried to offer these children a daily offer – and most of them took advantage of it. But that only consisted of one hour of German and one hour of math. Of course, that was far too little.
What is the main problem with this?
There was not enough talk in these two hours. When these boys and girls are at home, they usually only speak in their mother tongue – most of the children in the learning house have a migration background. Normally, the learning house is a good balance because the children talk in German there.
Children often do not enjoy learning. Do the children still like to go there?
An hour ago I was in the groups again and I have to say: As a child I would have loved to go there too. Doing homework in small groups is more enjoyable than sitting at home with the mother controlling. The nice thing is that you not only learn together, but also play with each other afterwards or go out. This is how they experience community.
Does the learning house bring something to all children?
Of course, it cannot work miracles, but it helps to reduce deficits. And they are big, as this year’s school enrollment has shown again: The range in development is up to four years. It takes a lot to reduce these deficits – in addition to the pre-school year, the learning house is a very important factor.
What does the corona crisis mean for children with deficits?
Many of these students have to repeat the year.
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