RESL.eu – Reducing Early School Leaving in Europe: Country Report – Austria. Work Package II, Part 2, Phase II

Austria has been paying particular attention to the topic of early school leaving (ESL; German: früher Schulabgang) in recent years and, in doing so, has been closely monitoring the impetus coming from the European Commission. The various policy and research documents on this topic deal with the difficulties faced by those young people whose educational capital and job market qualifications are below the expected standard in today’s knowledge-based society.
This Country Report presents the measures that have been developed in Austria since 2000 to prevent, intervene in and compensate for ESL. In the preparation of this report, national policy documents (49) and research papers (27) were studied in detail with regard to different aspects (e.g. drivers and rationales, EU policy influence, processes of implementation, good practices) and supplemented by the opinions of key stakeholders from the fields of politics, the economy, education and the labour market. More specifically, semi-structured interviews were conducted with representatives of the Federal Ministry of the Interior, the Federal Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture, the national bureau for employment and training, two local education authorities and two local industry and commerce associations.
The report is divided into three chapters. Chapter 1 discusses the measures to reduce ESL that have been implemented in Austria since 2000. For this purpose, the current national reform programmes (Nationale Reformprogramme; NRP) and corresponding implementation reports (Umsetzungsberichte; UB) were carefully analysed. Attention was also given to the so-called drivers and rationales behind the respective implementation processes. The analysis shows that Austria has followed and, to a large extent, implemented the European Commission’s country-specific recommendations. However, the recommendation by both the European Commission and the OECD that Austria should implement comprehensive schools for 10-14-year-olds has so far not been followed. Section 1.2 presents the content, aims and levels of impact of the 30 measures that have been implemented in Austria to date. Section 1.3 provides more information about local measures financed through the European Social Fund (ESF). In Chapter 2, the official minutes taken during sessions of the Austrian parliament (Nationalrat) are used to reconstruct how the different political parties approach EU initiatives to fight ESL and youth unemployment (“Youth Employment Initiative” and “Youth on the Move”). The reconstruction shows that the Social Democratic Party of Austria (one of the two parties in the governing coalition) strongly approves of and supports the EU initiatives and measures. The Austrian People’s Party (second coalition party) and one of the opposition parties (The Greens) agree in principle that these initiatives and measures are important, but prioritise different aspects. Resistance to the EU initiatives is voiced by the remaining two opposition parties (The Freedom Party of Austria and the Alliance for the Future of Austria). Further signs of resistance at the macro-, meso- and micro-levels are identified by analysing the answers provided by the seven stakeholders interviewed for the purposes of this study. Chapter 3 looks at good practices in education and social policy and deals primarily with measures that have been implemented on the recommendation of the EU and have yielded positive evaluations. The information provided in this chapter is drawn from the analysis of 42 evaluation reports.