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EDUCATION

Nude photos teacher causes a row in Linz

A secondary school teacher from Linz, Upper Austria, who was sacked for posing nude photos of himself on the Internet has won an unfair dismissal case and is now working in a different school.

Published: 11 May 2015 10:02 CEST
Nude photos teacher causes a row in Linz
File photo:Shutterstock

The man, who now teaches in a New Middle School and is an amateur bodybuilder, had posted images of his muscular physique in a number of Internet forums. In some of the photos he is completely naked.

The images were brought to the attention of the head of the regional school board, Fritz Enzenhofer, who promptly fired the teacher.  The teacher took his case before the employment court and won. The school board was then obliged to rehire him.

The teacher, who took a break from his job to travel to the US but then returned to Austria after his relationship broke down, said he had only posted the photos when he thought he wasn't going to be teaching again. 

Enzenhofer is unhappy with the decision and told the Kronen Zeitung newspaper that if it was up to him, the teacher would be “long gone”. He added that the court had accused him of damaging the teacher’s reputation.

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EDUCATION

Sweden’s Social Democrats call for ban on new free schools

Sweden's opposition Social Democrats have called for a total ban on the establishment of new profit-making free schools, in a sign the party may be toughening its policies on profit-making in the welfare sector.

Published: 18 April 2024 16:09 CEST
Sweden's Social Democrats call for ban on new free schools

“We want the state to slam on the emergency brakes and bring in a ban on establishing [new schools],” the party’s leader, Magdalena Andersson, said at a press conference.

“We think the Swedish people should be making the decisions on the Swedish school system, and not big school corporations whose main driver is making a profit.” 

Almost a fifth of pupils in Sweden attend one of the country’s 3,900 primary and secondary “free schools”, first introduced in the country in the early 1990s. 

Even though three quarters of the schools are run by private companies on a for-profit basis, they are 100 percent state funded, with schools given money for each pupil. 

This system has come in for criticism in recent years, with profit-making schools blamed for increasing segregation, contributing to declining educational standards and for grade inflation. 

In the run-up to the 2022 election, Andersson called for a ban on the companies being able to distribute profits to their owners in the form of dividends, calling for all profits to be reinvested in the school system.  

READ ALSO: Sweden’s pioneering for-profit ‘free schools’ under fire 

Andersson said that the new ban on establishing free schools could be achieved by extending a law banning the establishment of religious free schools, brought in while they were in power, to cover all free schools. 

“It’s possible to use that legislation as a base and so develop this new law quite rapidly,” Andersson said, adding that this law would be the first step along the way to a total ban on profit-making schools in Sweden. 

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