Almost half of schoolchildren in the Austrian capital Vienna speak a foreign language as their mother tongue, with the figure at one in five elsewhere in the country.
The number of foreign nationals entering the country reached a record high last year as the country faced its worst migration crisis since the Second World War thanks to Europe’s migrant influx.
Now Austria’s Department for Migration and Schools says 47.5 per cent of schoolchildren in the capital do not speak German at home, while over half (58 per cent) of kindergarten children in the city do not speak German as their native language.
Österreich Journal says schools in Austria are already offering instruction at least 25 languages, including Albanian, Arabic, Dari, Kurdish, Pashto, Persian and Somali.
Austrian Integration Minister Sebastian Kurz has called for special German classes to help foreign children integrate, and Die Presse reports that teachers’ unions are already supporting calls to put migrant children in separate classes.
Breitbart London reported earlier this month how Austria’s population is now soaring thanks to the migrant crisis. The small central European nation saw its population grow by 100,000 last year, while unemployment also rose to half a million.
Hundreds of thousands of migrants entered the country last year, although most simply used it as a transit route to reach Germany. However, with Germany now gradually tightening its borders and turning more people away, a growing number are staying in Austria.
The numbers are becoming a particular problem in the town of Linz, where passengers have started asking authorities to accompany them while they wait for trains at the city’s main station.
One concerned father said: “My daughter is 16 and is terrified when she has to come through Linz train station in the evening.
“As a result, we have now arranged a travel group with other parents. My wife and I went to see it for ourselves. We travelled the same route that our daughter did and we found out that it was even worse than she described.
“There was not a policeman in sight and in a country like Austria it cannot be the case that our children are scared going to and from work.”