OECD Reviews of School Resources: Austria 2016

This report for Austria forms part of the OECD Review of Policies to Improve the Effectiveness of Resource Use in Schools (also referred to as the School Resources Review , see for further details). The purpose of the review is to explore how school resources can be governed, distributed, utilised and managed to improve the quality, equity and efficiency of school education. School resources are understood in a broad way, including financial resources (e.g. expenditures on education, school budget), physical resources (e.g. school infrastructure, computers), human resources (e.g. teachers, school leaders) and other resources (e.g. learning time).

Austria was one of the education systems which opted to participate in the country review strand and host a visit by an external review team. Members of the review team were Deborah Nusche (OECD), Thomas Radinger (OECD), Marius R. Busemeyer (University of Konstanz) and Henno Theisens (The Hague University for Applied Sciences). Deborah Nusche co-ordinated the review between January 2015 and January 2016 and Thomas Radinger co-ordinated the review between February and June 2016. The biographies of the members of the review team are provided in . This publication is the report of the review team. It provides, from an international perspective, an independent analysis of major issues facing the use of school resources in Austria, current policy initiatives, and possible future approaches. The report serves three purposes: i) to provide insights and advice to the Austrian education authorities; ii) to help other countries understand the Austrian approach to the use of school resources; and iii) to provide input for the final comparative analysis of the OECD School Resources Review.

The scope for analysis in this report includes public primary and lower secondary education (including Volksschule, Hauptschule/Neue Mittelschule and AHS Unterstufe ). At the request of the Austrian authorities, the focus areas of the Review of School Resources in Austria were: i) funding and governance of school education; ii) organisation of the school offer; and iii) management of the teaching workforce. This report reflects the situation of the Austrian education system at the time of the review visit in June 2015. The review team provided the Austrian Ministry of Education and Womens Affairs (BMBF) with an initial draft report at the beginning of November 2015 to inform the negotiations of the education reform commission comprised of representatives of the federal government and the provinces. The negotiations of the education reform commission resulted in a proposal for education reform that was presented 17 November 2015 and envisaged to be finalised by June 2016 (see Annex 1.1).

The involvement of Austria in the OECD review was co-ordinated by Bernhard Chabera and Andrea Schmlzer of the Department of International Multilateral Affairs at the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education and Womens Affairs. An important part of the involvement of Austria was the preparation of a comprehensive and informative country background report (CBR) on school resources authored by the Federal Institute for Educational Research, Innovation and Development of the Austrian School System (BIFIE) and the Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS). The OECD review team is very grateful to the main authors of the CBR and to all those who assisted them in providing a high-quality informative document. The CBR is an important output from the OECD project in its own right as well as an important source for the review team. Unless indicated otherwise, the data for this report are taken from the CBR. The CBR follows guidelines prepared by the OECD Secretariat and provides extensive information, analysis and discussion in regard to the national context, the organisation of the education system, the use of school resources and the views of key stakeholders. In this sense, the CBR and this report complement each other and should be read in conjunction for a more comprehensive view of the effectiveness of school resource use in Austria.