Education in Austria
Schools offer a series of vocational-technical and university preparatory tracks involving one to four additional years of education beyond the minimum mandatory level.
Under the rule of the Habsburg Monarchs Maria Theresa and Joseph II, priests took on the role of educators and were eventually considered civil servants under law.
Duty of parish priests included the promotion of modern religious views of tolerance, morality and ethics, agriculture, hygiene, medical improvements, civic virtues and obedience to the state.
Despite the teachings of priests having regulations placed by the state, this new role was important in reaching a more diverse ran[2] Mandatory primary education was introduced by Empress Maria Theresa of Austria (1740–1780), mandating in 1774 that all children of both sexes from the ages of six to twelve had to attend school.
[5] In 1910 girls were admitted to boys‘ gymnasiums, but they were neither allowed to participate actively in class nor to take part in exams.
An AHS, also known as a gymnasium, is an institution providing different fields of specialization that grant the diploma (Reifeprüfung or Matura) needed to enter university.
(Other than Berufsbildende Höhere Schulen, which also allows access to university, they do not provide graduates with any specific skill immediately useful on the labor market, but concentrate on general education in the humanities, science, and languages).
The rigidity of the two-track system required that the most important educational decision in a child’s life—with all of the implications it had for the future—be made at the age of ten.
Children from agricultural backgrounds or of urban working-class parents generally attended the Volkschule and the Hauptschule and then entered the workforce.
The early selection process meant that children of the largest segment of the population, farmers, and workers, were grossly under-represented at higher schools and universities, whereas the children of a relatively small segment of the population, those who had attended higher schools or the universities, were over-represented.
The Act of 1962 and subsequent amendments require that all state-funded schools be open to children regardless of birth, gender, race, status, class, language, or religion.
The law also attempts to introduce more flexibility into the traditional two-track system and provide students with a greater degree of latitude within it.
Although the primary and secondary school system continues to be fundamentally based on the two-track idea, after a series of reforms in the 1970s and 1980s, ten- to fourteen-year-olds are no longer streamed into A and B groups in the Hauptschule.
In urban centers with a full spectrum of educational opportunities, the Hauptschule has become less popular, and parents who would not necessarily have enrolled their children in an AHS a few years ago have begun doing so.
Therefore, special remedial and intercultural programs are being developed so that the compulsory school system in Austria can continue to fulfill its educational and social roles.
It argued for abolishing the two-track system for ten- to fourteen-year-olds and combining the Hauptschule and the first four years of the AHS into a new comprehensive middle school.
Owing to the particular nature of Austria's educational laws (a two-thirds majority is required, see above) a multi-party consensus is needed to change the status quo.
Vocational schools with a focus on either business and economics or technical subjects, such as commercial academies (HAK = "Handelsakademie") and polytechnics (HTL = "Höhere Technische Lehranstalt") also finish with the Matura, but last five years as opposed to the four-year Oberstufe (upper stage) of the Gymnasium.
Compulsory subjects for the written finals are German and Mathematics, as well as a modern foreign language (usually English, French, Spanish or Italian).
In particular, it has been argued that the current system encourages rote learning (see also education reform), hinders students’ creativity and obscures the fact that the body of knowledge is constantly changing.
Various forms of alternative assessment have been proposed, most notably the portfolio as well as teamwork and peer review also in exam situations.
In fiction, Friedrich Torberg’s novel Der Schüler Gerber (1930) about a Matura candidate driven to suicide on the day of his oral exams by his cruel mathematics teacher has become a classic.
The growing number of students at Austrian universities reflects the liberalization of educational policy at secondary and higher levels.
The number of students beginning university-level education after completing the AHS program also increased and amounted to 85% in 1990, compared with 60% in the mid-1960s.
It is even possible to enroll in several subject fields concurrently (which is often done by gifted students to signal their abilities to the job market).
But children of white-collar workers, civil servants, and the self-employed accounted for more than 80% of enrollments at Austrian institutions of higher education in the early 1990s.
Moderate tuition fees were introduced in 2001, which are supposed to create a small incentive for students to graduate more quickly.
In most subject fields, students need to submit a Diplomarbeit, a research paper of an average of about 100 pages, but sometimes considerably longer.
As the requirements differ strongly and are not always clear, some students spend years working on this thesis, thus (usually not deliberately) delaying graduation.
Proponents of the two-track secondary system, for example, defend it as performance oriented and criticize the leveling of achievement or lowering of standards the introduction of a single compulsory middle school would involve.
