Educational psychologist says Austria’s headscarf ban harms pupils

Austria’s new ban on headscarves for girls up to age 14 came into force with the start of the school year in eastern Austria on Monday, but Vienna educational psychologist Christiane Spiel said it could cause emotional problems, ORF reported.

“I believe it is really a problem for the girls,” Spiel told the ORF programme Wien heute. She said children loved their parents, who told them to wear a headscarf because of their faith, while teachers at schools they also enjoyed attending told them not to wear one.

“The child is therefore unable to do justice to both sides,” Spiel said. This created an inner conflict and “really led to emotional problems”, she added.

Spiel said the potential extremes of the ban had not been thought through. Measures in the education system should ultimately help children learn better and feel comfortable at school, she said.

She praised other education reforms introduced with the new school year, including the Chancenbonus for so-called hotspot schools and greater school autonomy over German-language support.

“A lot has been done,” Spiel said. “Now we just have to make sure that it is implemented well across the board. But from my point of view, all the measures are moving in the right direction.”

Spiel said researchers had demanded the Chancenbonus, known in academic discussions as a social index, for many years. Schools can also now decide whether German-language support should be provided through integrated teaching or special German support classes, and help determine when a child moves into regular classes.

Initial reports from the teachers’ union indicated that the first day under the new ban was calm at most schools. Paul Kimberger, the union’s top representative, told the Austrian Press Agency that the limited feedback received so far suggested proceedings had been “very orderly and respectful”.

Thomas Bulant of the compulsory-school teachers’ union in Vienna described the start of the school year as the calmest in a long time. Thomas Krebs, deputy chair of Vienna’s central committee of state teachers, said experiences ranged from a lack of knowledge and a willingness to cooperate to open aggression.

Krebs said he had heard from one primary school that the significantly older brothers of a girl had reacted angrily to the ban. He said he had not heard of boycott actions or widespread attempts to circumvent the ban with alternative head coverings, although one school in Vienna’s Favoriten district had reported an unusually high number of violations.

Ümit Vural, chairman of the Islamic Religious Community in Austria, sharply criticised reports that Islamic associations or non-governmental organisations had offered to cover possible administrative fines imposed on parents. The organisation plans to challenge the law again before Austria’s Constitutional Court.

As expected, an application to repeal the ban was filed with the Constitutional Court on Monday, the court confirmed to the Austrian Press Agency. The current ban, which applies until children reach religious maturity at age 14, is the second attempt to restrict head coverings in schools.

A headscarf ban for primary schools was introduced under the coalition government in autumn 2019. The Constitutional Court repealed it after just over a year, ruling that a measure targeting only Muslims was incompatible with the state’s religious neutrality.