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Normally children go to the nearest local primary school without much thought about choice. As a general rule, any 7-year-old child living in community A must attend primary school in the said community A. This is the case because a school district (i.e. catchment area) is defined for every public compulsory school by law. Children of statutory school age living in the school district of a primary school must be admitted if they meet the required conditions for admission as stipulated by law.

Parents can decide, however, to send their child to a fee-paying school instead, or to the training schools affiliated with the Teacher Training Colleges, which are also free. In actual fact only 4% of all the children in primary education go to private schools on an Austrian average, in Vorarlberg it is under 1%. (Link to more detailed figures) This may have to do with the fact that most parents prefer to have their children at a school in their immediate neighbourhood because this supports interaction between classmates in their spare time and makes staying in touch much easier. We do not seem to like the idea of having to drive a first-year pupil to school and back every day and, thereby, isolate him from the local community. What it does take, then, to opt for a private school is strong conviction or a special talent or handicap of a child. If your child is or seems to be a slow learner, the teacher in nursery school will suggest a different route: the child will be psychologically tested, then enter a slow start programme (one year at school in a class called pre-school before he or she starts with class one in the following year), or start at a special school, or start in a regular class, but receive instruction on the basis of the curriculum for special schools. The general tendency in Austria at the moment is to integrate children with mental or physical disabilities into normal classrooms. Two arguments are obvious: the child with special needs will learn in the normal atmosphere of a classroom of healthy children, and these in turn will learn to handle and support slow learners or otherwise difficult or disabled children. The phase of secondary education contains a number of choices. The decisive choice to make seems to be whether to send your child to a grammar school with more emphasis on academic achievement or to a secondary school, which caters for all pupils of a given age range and area. In many cases, the location of the school in relation to where you live will predetermine your choice. Grammar schools tend to be in towns and cities, and most pupils will use public transport to get there. Especially in rural areas the percentage of pupils attending a secondary school is quite high (e.g. up to 80% in some places in Vorarlberg), whereas in a city like Vienna between 60 and 80% of the pupils go to a grammar school, leaving the secondary school deserted and largely populated by socially disadvantaged groups of the population (children of guestworkers and refugees). In 1996/97 the flow of pupils into secondary education looked like this:

If your choice is a grammar school, this very often means a straight 8 years in the same school including A-levels.

If your child goes to a secondary school, there are choices to make after four years at the age of fourteen. Again the geographical factor might override all other considerations. On the other hand, there are schools that promote special talents or interests by giving more space and weight to sports, or music, or conservation, or computer studies, or languages.

The following table gives you the percentages of pupils transferring from Secondary School or Grammar School to another type of school at age 14.

Source: APA, Vorarlberger Nachrichten 1998 (data 1996/97)

In contrast to the primary school sector, parents have to make choices for their children at this stage, and they are free to choose any school they like; the reservation being that entrance to grammar schools and the vocational schools is competitive.

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