OECD Review of Policies to Improve the Effectiveness of Resource Use in Schools
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OECD Review of Policies to Improve the Effectiveness of Resource Use in Schools Country Background Report for Austria Prepared by Michael Bruneforth, Bernhard Chabera, Stefan Vogtenhuber, Lorenz Lassnigg Autumn 2015 This report was prepared by the Ministry of Education and Women’s Affairs (BMBF), the Federal Institute for Educational Research, Innovation & Development of the Austrian School System (BIFIE) and the Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS) as an input to the OECD Review of Policies to Improve the Effectiveness of Resource Use in Schools. The OECD and the European Commission (EC) have established a partnership for the project, whereby participation costs of countries which are part of the European Union’s Erasmus+ programme are partly covered. The participation of Austria was organised with the support of the EC in the context of this partnership. The report responds to guidelines the OECD provided to all countries and it aimed to prepare for the country visit of the OECD review team to Austria in June 2015. The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the national authority, the OECD or its member countries. Further information about the OECD Review is available at www.oecd.org/edu/school/schoolresourcesreview.htm. The published version of the country background report entails a number of editorial changes. The page numbers given in the reference “Bruneforth et al., forthcoming” in the country review report Nusche, D., T. Radinger, M. R. Busemeyer, H. Theisens (2016), OECD Reviews of School Resources: Austria 2016, OECD Reviews of School Resources, OECD Publishing, Paris. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264256729-en, therefore, do not necessarily match the pages in the published version of the background report. - 1 - 2 Table of Contents Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................................... 3 Executive Summary........................................................................................................................................ 6 ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................................................................................ 9 Schools and Programmes ........................................................................................................................... 9 Selected federal laws – translation and online sources ............................................................................... 9 Other abbreviations .................................................................................................................................. 10 Naming of governmental levels ................................................................................................................ 11 Purpose and scope of this report .................................................................................................................. 12 Chapter 1: The national context.................................................................................................................... 14 1.1 The economic and social context .................................................................................................. 14 1.2 Demographic developments ......................................................................................................... 14 1.3 Political context ............................................................................................................................ 17 1.4 Public sector management ............................................................................................................ 22 Chapter 2: The school system ....................................................................................................................... 26 2.1 Organisation of the school system ................................................................................................ 26 2.1A Recent and ongoing reforms to the organisation of schools ......................................................... 31 2.2 Education environment ................................................................................................................. 34 2.3 Objectives of the education system and student learning objectives ............................................ 36 2.4 Distribution of responsibilities within the school system ............................................................. 36 2.5 Market mechanisms in the school system .................................................................................... 42 2.6 Performance of the school system ................................................................................................ 43 2.7 Policy approaches to equity in education ..................................................................................... 48 2.8 Main challenges ............................................................................................................................ 50 Chapter 3: Governance of resource use in schools ....................................................................................... 57 3.1 Level of resources and policy concerns ........................................................................................ 57 3.2 Sources of revenue ....................................................................................................................... 63 3.3 Planning of resource use ............................................................................................................... 66 3.4 Implementation of policies to improve the effectiveness of resource use .................................... 70 3.5 Main challenges ............................................................................................................................ 71 Chapter 4: Resource distribution .................................................................................................................. 74 4.1 Distribution of resources between levels of the education administration ................................... 74 4.2 Distribution of financial resources across resource types ............................................................. 75 4.3 Distribution of resources between levels and sectors of the school system ................................. 77 4.4. Distribution of resources across individual schools ..................................................................... 78 4.5 Distribution of school facilities and materials .............................................................................. 81 4.6 Distribution of teacher resources .................................................................................................. 87 4.7 Distribution of school leadership resources .................................................................................. 91 4.8 Main challenges .................................................................................................................................. 93 Chapter 5: Resource utilisation .................................................................................................................... 95 5.1 Matching resources to individual student learning needs ............................................................. 95 5.2 Organisation of student learning time .......................................................................................... 98 5.3 Allocation of teacher resources to students ................................................................................ 101 5.3a Organisation of the teachers’ work ............................................................................................. 109 - 3 5.3b Support staff in schools .............................................................................................................. 113 5.4 Organisation of school leadership .............................................................................................. 114 5.5 Teaching and learning environment within school ..................................................................... 115 5.6 Use of school facilities and materials ......................................................................................... 118 5.7 Organisation of education governance ....................................................................................... 118 5.8 Main challenges .......................................................................................................................... 122 Chapter 6: Resource management .............................................................................................................. 124 6.1 Capacity building for resource management .............................................................................. 124 6.2 Monitoring of resource use ......................................................................................................... 124 6.3 Transparency and reporting ........................................................................................................ 125 6.4 Incentives for the effective use of resources .............................................................................. 125 6.5 Main challenges .......................................................................................................................... 126 Reference list .............................................................................................................................................. 128