Changes in the Austrian educational system 1995-2007: Reducing finances and introducing the spirit of business and competition

Introduction

Before giving a survey on the changes two pieces of preliminary information

1. Organisation of the school system

Basically we have 4 years of primary education from 6-10 years of age followed by 4 years of secondary school education from 10-14, with an extra year of vocational school if pupils want to start an apprenticeship later on.

At the age of ten they also have the possibility to opt for an 8-year grammar school education finishing with the A-levels. Roughly 30% of an age group attend grammar schools, but in the big agglomerations the figure is closer to 50-60%. Those who attend normal secondary schools in agglomerations usually come from socially disadvantaged backgrounds and children of immigrants.

That means that Austrian pupils are faced with a choice of school at the age of ten with two deplorable consequences: one is that pressure increases on primary school teachers and children so that children qualify for grammar schools, the more prestigious schools destined to lead pupils to an academic career. The second consequence is that this choice increases the social bias of the school system because many more children of the lower social groups end up in secondary modern schools which are destined to offer general education to pupils with lesser academic interests.

So Austria is very similar to Germany in this respect with one important difference: the teaching in both types of school follows the same syllabus, which in fact means that there are no barriers for pupils from secondary modern schools to opt for higher education. If they want to continue their school education after 14 years they can enter a special type of grammar school lasting four years and finishing with the A-levels (Matura) or they can enter technical or commercial academic schools which last 5 years and finish with A-levels. Today more than 50% of the young people taking A-levels come from secondary modern schools.

Teacher formation is organised at academies – since 2007 transformed into pedagogical universities - for primary and secondary schools, and for grammar schools and academic technical and commercial schools at universities. The two different groups have different incomes, different professional duties and rights, and different unions.

Our organisation is one of two teachers organisations in Austria that are trying to overcome this division by advocating a university diploma for all teachers and a school organisation that does not force a choice of school on the children at the age of ten.

For more detailed information you may use the following link to the ministry of education: http://www.bmbwk.gv.at/fremdsprachig/en/schools/brief.htm4589.xml

2. Governments during the period of change 1995 - 2006

It is important to point out that the changes were carried out by different governments yet following the same agenda: in the nineties by a coalition government of the Labour party with the Conservative party (in the first half of the nineties with a Labour minister of education, in the second half with a Conservative minister of education, Mrs Gehrer, from 1996 onwards); from 2000 to 2006 a coalition government of the Conservative party with the rightwing Freedom party. Since 2007 there has been a new coalition between the Conservative and Labour parties.

Governmental strategies between 1995 - 2006

The first half of the nineties saw a rhetoric of reform reaching the schools, centering round school development and resulting in laws allowing schools to introduce/create new subjects in the name of more school autonomy.

On the other hand there was a growing concern about rising costs of the educational system largely attributed to the fact that a large section of teachers were reaching an age where salary costs threatened to rise sharply. So a first step towards cost control was taken by introducing an expenditure control mechanism for schools of higher education: total teacher costs expressed as costs per pupil - a per capita quota

• 1995 2,044 WE Teaching units per pupil in grammar schools
• 2001 1,749 WE
• 2003 1,68 WE

In compulsory education (secondary modern schools) which is in the hands of the Bundesländer- the central government just paying the teachers - it took a few more years (2000) before there was an agreement between the central government and the local governments, changing the teacher: pupil ratio from approximately 1:14 to 1:15.

In the year 1995 Austria joined the EU. From that moment on the pressure on public expenditure became extremely strong. The governmental strategies focussed on meeting the Maastricht criteria at all costs.

I see four lines of government action:

• A cost reduction policy
• A steady, ongoing rhetoric of reform in general
• An increased rhetoric on school autonomy and school profiles
• Media campaigns against teachers in general and the trade unions in particular

1. The policy of cost reduction

The aim of this policy was to attain a freeze of school expenditure or at least a reduction of the rate of expenditure growth

The first big steps towards change were the budgets for 1995 and 1996. Measures taken:

• 1995: parents have to pay 10% of costs schoolbooks and public transport to school.
• In the following years a freeze on overall costs for school books resulting in the necessity of parents having to buy certain school books themselves.
• No wage increase for two years apart from a premium paid once each year. (wage increases tended to lag behind inflation rate for most of the last 12 years)
• Lowering of overtime premium; pressure to shift overtime to younger and as a result cheaper teachers.
• Reduction in teacher training seminars – in service training.
• Freeze of teacher employment.
• Increase of teaching assignments per teacher in evening schools for adults.
• First cutback on number of lessons (6) in schools for the 10-14 year-olds in the following subjects: German, English, Maths, History, Biology, Latin.
• Freeze on the allocation of the above mentioned per capita quota to schools of higher education.
• Freeze of school budgets for media, furniture etc.
• At the same time opening school space for advertising – school sponsoring.

Second step 1998:

• A further change in the payment of overtime – intended result: lowering of costs.
• Change in the payment of teachers of A- level classes resulting in more teaching obligations for the colleagues concerned.

Third step 2001:

• Change in the appraisal of the class tutor’s job in schools of higher education. Up to that year it used to be considered as part of the teaching job – one out of 20 lessons – paid according to one’s year of service. From 2001 onwards it is considered as a non-teaching activity and paid as a fixed supplementary allowance. This reform resulted in less money for the class tutor (losses between 40 to 80% according to your age), and secondly in a higher teaching assignment for class tutors (have to teach an additional class).
• Compulsory education: different union - different strategy. The union, dominated by conservative and social democratic factions, opted for a model – a seemingly more just model of taking into account the job of a teacher more comprehensively by including all those activities that are not normally seen/realized by the public

Yearly working time: 1776 hours (1736 if teacher has more than 25 years of work)

Teaching obligation		792	A
Preparatory work for lessons and follow-up tasks (e.g. correction)		660	B
Further duties (e.g. teacher conferences, parents consultation hours)	316	100	C
Class tutor		66
Non paid teaching hours		10
Teacher training		15
Hours for special tasks (variable)		133 ( 93 for older teachers)
Sum		1776

By deliberately fixing the number of “teaching weeks” at 36 instead of 39 weeks of a normal school year this model frees “working hours” for other activities (e.g. school development) without extra costs for the government – a perfect piece of prestidigitation.

Fourth step 2003

• substantial cut in lessons for pupils: another 6 lessons less at lower secondary school level, 8 lessons less for upper secondary

The main results of all these measures can be described as follows:

• The total reduction of lessons at grammar school level over the years accounts for 20 lessons per week, equivalent to more than half a year of teaching hours for pupils and is, in my opinion, directly responsible for the drastic increase in privately organised coaching lessons. For the secondary modern schools (10-14 years of age) a reduction of 12 lessons.
• Teacher training seminars by the ministry have been cut by two thirds.
• Weekly teaching assignments for teachers have increased for almost all grades of teachers.
• The number of pupils per class has risen in many different types of schools, especially in grammar schools.
• The purchasing power of teachers has dropped – a loss of roughly 2 “ Biennien”. So teachers are confronted with more work for less money, and at the same time they have to cope with a deterioriation in the pension scheme and fewer rights.
• Private costs for families rise from 3,8% to 4,7% (at schools between 6-18 years).
• Decrease of public expenditure on schools.

	% of BIP	% of global budget
1998	2,72	9,54
2006	2,45	8,92
2007	2,43	9,36
(2008)	(2,37)

2. The policy of reforms

The massive cost reduction agenda was accompanied by a rhetoric of reform creating the public image of a ministry working hard for necessary improvements in the teaching of our children facing unwilling teachers and uncooperative teachers’ unions.

• 1998 QUIS (quality in schools) - Quality control - internal and external evaluation
• New curricula – syllabus reduced to general guidelines and core topics starting in 1999
• White book of the ministry of education in 1999/2000 on quality management and quality control in the Austrian educational system
• Zukunftskommission, “future commission”, inaugurated 2003 after bad PISA results, with the final report in 2005

This final report discerned 7 fields of action drawing on all the previous reform papers including everything that researchers in the field of pedagogy have put forward in the past two decades to improve education but at the same time enacting a profound change in the traditional perception of the task of state schools. If in the past every state school was expected to teach according to the same syllabus offering every pupil the same quality of education no matter which school the child went to, the public is now encouraged to view schools as competing institutions among which they have the right to choose the most appropriate one for their child. Schools, on the other hand, shall be given the right to choose their teachers, and can already to a certain extent choose their pupils.

Consequences:

• Drastic increase in number of school meetings.
• Internal and external evaluation is being introduced.
• Schools are being prepared for being run like enterprises. The equation school = enterprise is spreading in the minds of people.
• A new management level is about to be introduced – a so-called middle management, a sort of ‘headteacher’ in subjects like languages, maths, sciences, plus those teachers working in school development.
• Consumerist attitudes of parents and pupils on the increase.
• Concept of selection/choice becomes more and more mainstream – of schools, teachers and pupils.

3. School autonomy – school profiles

The magic word “school autonomy” was introduced in the early 90s encouraging schools to develop regional or local focuses. This was first taken up mostly by secondary modern schools (because they are in competition with grammar schools). In agglomerations you will hardly find a “normal” secondary modern school today, but lots of schools calling themselves sports, music or computer schools.

But in the second half of the nineties the ministerial discourse changed. Schools were expected to develop specific school profiles. This expectation was accompanied by a rhetoric of competition and seeming appreciation of teacher engagement and professionalism. Also upper secondary schools (grammar schools mostly) joined the race for the most attractive school in an understanding of competition with academic commercial or technical schools which attracted lots of pupils from grammar schools and secondary modern schools.

Profiles have to be adopted in school councils where parents are given a say as well as pupils. These school councils decide about new focuses, which traditional subjects to sacrifice for new “subjects”, etc.

Autonomy also allows cutbacks of resources to be masked:

• in cases when the school community is given the right to change regulations concerning the number of pupils attending certain subjects like languages or IT. For example: in language classes the regulation is that schools can open a parallel course if the number of pupils in a class is higher than 30. Or in information technology you can offer a parallel course if the number of pupils is higher than 13. Since the school gets a fixed number of teaching units you can only start a school specific course ( the school community may decide on that) which is not part of the normal curriculum if you do not make use of your right to open parallel courses (although you are entitled to do so by the general regulations).
• schools are given the opportunity to raise sponsoring money for extra investment, in reality to mask the continuous cutback of resources. Austrian schools have become places of advertising, with all sorts of side effects.

Consequences:

• Schools and teachers are losing the notion of being part of the educational system that is supposed to offer education at a high standard for everyone, but are increasingly considered by teachers as their enterprise, “their” creation based on their specific knowledge, expertise, which is rated much higher than the “ordinary” teaching of “ordinary” subjects of the national syllabus. The latest “reform package” has even opened the possibility for schools to select pupils according to the school profile.
• For pupils the change from one school to another becomes more difficult.
• Growing necessity for introducing educational standards - centralised exams. The national syllabus has been reduced to general guidelines with a focus on “competencies” and core contents. With more and more school specific subjects (that are introduced at the expense of the number of lessons in other subjects) the necessity to introduce “standards”, elaborated by experts, to test attainment levels (school rankings will inevitably result from this) seems to be inevitable.
• Orienting schools towards preparing pupils for private certificates (ECDL, Cambridge Certificate, etc.).

3. A media campaign – populist criticism of the “black sheep” amongst teachers

All the years of the major reforms were preceded and accompanied by media campaigns, more or less successful attempts at discrediting teachers’ resistance against various reform plans by referring to the ‘black sheep’ in the profession, by pointing out the privileges of employees of the public sector, and referring to a teacher’s job as a part-time job – on holiday most of the year.

Consequences:

• Media and the public demand an obligatory presence at school of 40 hours per week (ministry probably happy if they succeed in fixing 30 hours)
• The public and experts demand more autonomy for the heads of school: heads of schools shall be given the right to employ teachers and possibly dismiss them, thus weakening the position of teachers considerably.
• Amongst teachers very strong dissatisfaction leading to passive resistance to reform plans, to a loss of involvement – to a certain escapism.

  This reaction also coincides with an increase of the average age of the teacher population (large portion amongst grammar school teachers above 50, in compulsary education above 45) due to an almost complete freeze of teacher employment in the last 10 years. It is also a result of the weak resistance organised by the teachers unions against the deteriorations in working conditions and pay.

The new coalition government

Since February 2007 a new coalition government (Labour party and Conservative party) has been in power. The ministry of education is in the hands of a social democrat minister. A new reform agenda has been published, with many positive goals like

• Smaller classes
• Individualisation and coaching
• Gradual introduction of a comprehensive school system
• German classes for migrant pupils
• Obligatory nursery school year

As an organisation that understands itself as promoting educational change towards a more open and just school we should be glad about this change in perspective. But we also have become wary of “reforms”. One reason for our scepticism is the lack of cooperation of the coalition parties: the social democrats want the comprehensive school, the Conservative party doesn’t. Another is the lack of money. The reforms above would mean a considerable increase in the budget for education which has already been fixed in advance, however. And thirdly, there is no break, no change in the orientation of schools towards business ideology, new management methods, profiling, evaluation, quality management.

What we see in general is a growth of the private school sector. According to the headlines of a conservative paper on 9th February 2008, more than a hundred thousand pupils in Austria attend private schools which according to PISA 2003 are seen to be better than state schools and - as the paper points out – much cheaper for the republic. The debate about the superiority of private schools over state schools has only just begun. Austria has signed the WTO protocols on liberalisation of education in the primary and secondary school sector in 1995. Before long we will be facing a discussion about introducing school vouchers thus allowing each parent to choose the school they feel best for their children. I am afraid I don’t see a public ready to stand up for “une école democratique”.