International Teacher Education Conference 2014 1

International Teacher Education Conference 2014
The Green party saw that there was a clear signal that the government should set to work on this, and demanded
that the chancellor (SPÖ) Werner Faymann, call an education summit inviting all parliamentary parties, social
partners and initiators of the petition. Even the industrial concerns insisted on immediate measures being taken.
It took half a year after the petition for a special committee of the National Assembly to sit down and hold
discussions. However power political personnel interests, the defence of privileges by union leaders and the
stupidity of the ruling parties thwarted any progress. The petition for education reform ran aground leaving no
trace.
However changes in our society today, frustrating results from the PISA tests in the last few years and similar
evidence finally forced both coalition parties, who for the last decades have been steering the talent in this
country, to an interim agreement which was celebrated by both major parties as a milestone. In the spring of
2013 education minister Claudia Schmidt of the SPÖ and science minister Karl-Heinz Töchterle (ÖVP)
presented the agreement to the reform of teacher training and qualification. Vice-chancellor Michael
Spindelegger (ÖVP) publicly expressed his satisfaction with the agreement saying that he was certain the new
arrangements would have a positive effect. However on closer inspection of the agreement one can find some
clear weaknesses, which actually led to immediate heavy disagreements amongst educational experts, opposition
parties and the umbrella organisations of the teaching groups, since not all professional groups involved in
education, school and learning have been accounted for.
There is no recipe to train a good teacher. In September 2013 the school year began amidst a shortage of
teachers. A further personnel intensive reform such as the reduction in the number of children in a class, the
introduction of the new secondary school (replacing the Hauptschule in secondary education) and a generation
change amongst the teachers (many retiring) have exacerbated the situation with personnel. The measures that
the audit office had recommended the previous year had been scarcely looked at by the education department
and were recently disparaged again by the education minister.
According to statements made by the former education minister Claudia Schmidt in January 2013 the actual
budget for education for that year was 8,060 billion euro, which, when compared to 2012 was an increase of 193
million euro. It was further stated that between the years 2000 and 2009 spending in education had increased
25% per head, which was confirmed in the national education report of 2012. Since 2009 the Austrian
government has made further investments in the conversion of all secondary schools into new middle schools
and a huge upgrading to provide the offer of an all-day school.
At present in primary school the lessons finish between 12.00 and 13.00 (sometimes as early as 11.30 in rural
areas). With the rise in the number of one parent families and working mothers the demand for afternoon school
became louder and louder. Many kindergartens and schools provide what they call Hort which is afternoon care
for primary school children. This, however, has to be paid for by the parents. In Hort the pedagogues supervise
the children doing their homework. However if the Hort is in the actual school building these pedagogues are not
allowed to do this supervising, instead the teachers are required to do this. No additional hours have been
budgeted for this which means a teacher contracted for 22 hours per week has to spend one of these hours
supervising homework, whilst down the road in a separately established Hort the pedagogues are doing this! A
proper all-day school cannot really be provided until the government employs more teachers to cover the extra
hours, otherwise an Austrian teacher is expected to spread their 22 hours a week in the class very thinly across
the day.
THE STONE BEGINS TO TURN SLOWLY.
In the higher education law of 2005 teachers and further education at the post-modern Pedagogic Academies,
Vocational Pedagogic Academies, and pedagogic institutes were integrated into the higher education/university
area. In 2007 the Teacher Training Colleges (known as the Pädagogische Hochschule, PH) were created. They
offer internationally comparable final degrees according to the guidelines of the so called Bologna Process.
These teacher training colleges will also train all future pedagogues in various fields of work. They also cover
management training in schools and the training for teaching in the field of adult education.
When Austria took over the presidency of the European Union from January to June 2006 it presented its motto
for education in the following words:
The reason for the attractiveness and the high ranking of the vocational education in Austria
lies in the wide range of vocational educational systems offered, in the good quality of the
training the special feature of which is the connection between the theory and the practise, and
in the permeability of the education system. In Austria no educational path leads to a dead end. Independently,
whether in full-time education or in part-time education whilst working, the option for a higher educational
qualification up to a university degree is there for everyone.
Life-long learning, LLL, should be encouraged. A LLL task force to co-ordinate the necessary concepts and
measures was formed. In the summer of 2011 it published the guidelines for an Austrian strategy to the life-long
accompaniment of learning. LLL 2020, this concept was dismissed by the government. In it political aims and
projects had been formulated. It contained a budget aim which committed the government to have raised the
spending on education, under the OECD indicator, from 5.4% of GDP in 2007 to 6% GDP by 2020.
1063