Austria: Organization of education in 1970/71 [antikvár]

Organization of Education In 1970/71 [The following Austrian contribution to the subject "Organization of Education in 1970/71" (UNESCO/BlE/Q/70/3) was compiled on the basis of a concept by Dr. Johann Burger, head of the department for general educational affairs of the Federal Ministry of Education and Arts.] I. Historical Background In Austria, just as in other countries, the development of education was initiated by the medieval monastery schools which, in addition to offering training for the ecclesiastical occupations, soon began to offer general education as well. The medieval universities were also ecclesiastical institutions, and their professors were frequently clergymen. The University of Vienna, which had been founded in 1365, reached its first peak as early as in the 15th century. The municipal schools were not founded by the Church. They developed first in the merchant towns, as the Municipal School of St. Stephen's in Vienna (mentioned already in 1237, school regulations in 1346). In the following, many Latin schools were established in Austria, first with clerical, later on also with secular teaching staff. For the further development of Austrian education particulary the spreading of the „Society of Jesus" was important, which took place within the scope of the counter-reformation: in 1552 the Jesuits founded a „college" (the Academic Grammar School) in Vienna and, later on, other schools in Graz, Innsbruck and other places. Soon they gained great influence also in the universities. In 1586 they took over the newly established University of Graz, in 1662 the University of Vienna was merged with the Jesuit school. After the dissolution of the Jesuit order in the year 1773 education was increasingly placed under state supervision. Particularly three regulations were important for Austrian education at the end of the 18th century and in the 19th century, their effects being partly felt even today: By the „General School Regulations for the German Normal, Upper Primary, and Trivium Schools" (General School Regulations of Maria Theresia; 1774) three types of school were created: the one- or two-grade trivium schools (in smaller towns and in the rural parishes, with the teaching subjects religious instruction, reading, writing and arithmetic); the three-grade upper primary schools (in larger townes, with the additional subjects Latin, drawing, geometry, geography and history, all subjects being taught in an elementary form); the four-grade normal schools (in the provincial capitals, with the additinnal subjects language instruction, mechanics and physics, furthermore with subjects for the training of teachers). By the „Imperial Primary School Act" (1869) eight-year compulsory school attendance was introduced, and the primary school was constituted to be the place where a broad elementary education should be offered. The former upper primary schools were taken over into the new system as (three-year) „Bürgerschulen" (higher-grade ele-