The
school inspection officials What for Sorts Control Curriculum Choice Freedom Pictures
Who controls schools?
The headmaster
The
school inspection officials School autonomy Nation-wide testing School books ParentsA bottom-up approach is easiest to describe: The headmaster is the immediate superior of all teachers. He runs the school, liaises with school authorities and advises teachers on their teaching and educational work. In addition to that, headmasters may inspect instruction being given in the classrooms at any time in order to satisfy themselves of the quality of the teaching.
The school inspection officials
The school inspectorate is exercised by school inspection officials, who are affiliated to the federal school authorities in the provinces. This means that the local inspector of schools visits schools and observes classroom practice. Whereas it used to be mainly the teachers, however, that were inspected some years ago, there is a definite trend now for inspectors to look at the whole organisation and the teachers as a particular part of them. In addition to that there is the provincial inspector of schools, who is responsible for school policy in general. The school inspectorate primarily works at the level of the administrative districts and the provinces. There is no central and permanently established school inspectorate operated by the Federal Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs. In addition to the guidance provided by the school inspection officials, the educational work at Austria's schools is scientifically monitored and evaluated by the Centre for School Development with departments in Vienna, Graz and Klagenfurt. (For further details on Evaluation at Regional, Provincial and Local Level click here.)
The concept of school autonomy was introduced by the 15th Amendment to the School Organisation Act and allows schools to shape their own curricula within a given framework. So it relates to educational matters, but also finanicial management and school legislation. School autonomy is to offer a degree of plurality and local or regional independence through curricular autonomy, in due respect of the comparability of qualifications and entitlements. The provincial inspectors of schools are in charge of this sensitive development. If a school goes beyond the given framework, it will have to be forbidden to put this independently devised curriculum into practice so as not to leave the common ground of shared principles. (Cf. http://www.eurydice.org/Eurybase/files/ATEN/ATEN62.htm - 1997)
Nation-wide tests are not administered in Austria at all. So achievements are relative and subsequently qualified when a pupil moves to another class, another school, practical training, higher education, or into a job. At the age of 15, compulsory education ends without a standardised formal examination. The school-leaving certificate from their school seems to be sufficient. At the end of the secondary phase of school education - around the age of 18 and after at least 12 years of formal schooling - students take the Matura, an equivalent to A-levels in England. But again the standard is local: the examination is designed and administered (on the basis of federal law) by the class teachers and not related to any national component. There is, however, a second marker for the written part of the exam, and the oral examination is public, the examination board consisting of the headmaster and the class teachers with the headmaster of another school of the same province or the inspector of schools in the chair.
Control is exerted indirectly by the process of approving of only certain books for use in school and for a given age group. A committee in the Ministry of Education and Culture is responsible for checking the content of the books submitted against the demands of the curriculum with regard to subject-matter and relevant didactic and methodological approaches.
Parents can exercise a certain amount of control as well. Elected parental representatives have a right to participate in several areas. They have consultative rights on questions of instruction, choice of teaching materials or use of funds entrusted to the school. But they also enjoy precisely-defined decision-making powers, e.g. planning of school events which last several days, the adoption of house rules, the issuance of autonomous curricular provisions, the formation of groups, the introduction of a five-day-week, 5 free days per year to be autonomously fixed by the school, or the timetable.
What for Sorts Control Curriculum Choice Freedom Pictures