An elementary school near Vienna advertised a part-time PE teacher role requiring “very well-written and spoken Turkish skills” alongside German and English.
The posting sparked criticism from Austria’s right-wing FPÖ and center-right ÖVP parties.
FPÖ education spokesman Helmut Fiedler stressed that the official language of education in primary schools is German, and that requiring Turkish is therefore unnecessary and could unfairly disadvantage local applicants.
Principal Erwin Rauscher defended the posting, saying it aimed to build bridges to students with different native languages.
Among the two hundred students at the school, twenty different languages are spoken.
The Ministry of Education has intervened, describing the advertisement as legally unclear and instructed the teacher education college associated with the elementary school to withdraw and reissue it with a clearer distinction between mandatory and additional criteria.
