Education
Main article: Education in AustriaEmpress Maria Theresa instituted the "General School Regulations,in 1774", creating the Austrian educational system. Eight-year compulsory education was introduced in 1869. Currently, compulsory schooling lasts nine years.
Four years of elementary school (Volksschule for ages 6–10) are followed by secondary education in a Hauptschule, or the first four years of Gymnasium as intermediate school. It has to be noted that in particular in the rural areas, there is quite often no gymnasium available, so everyone attends the hauptschule.
After the age of 14, students have their first real choice to make, no matter which they have attended until then. They can spend a year at the polytechnic school which qualifies them for vocational school as part of a apprenticeship. Or they can go to the Höhere Technische Lehranstalt (HTL), which are technically-orientated higher colleges and a unique feature of the Austrian educational system within Europe. Finalising the HTL permits to use the title "Ing." (Engineer). Another option would be the Handelsakademie with a focus on accounting and business administration. Finally there is the Gymnasium which ends with the Matura exam as the ultimate preparation for a further education at a university. There are a couple of other school types not mentioned here.
An alternative to university is the Austrian Fachhochschule, which is more practically oriented than a university but also leads to an academic degree. As part of the Bologna process, both the education at universities as well as at the Fachhochschulen changes.
Federal laws enforce uniformity across provinces throughout the educational system.
All state-run schools are free of charge. The largest university is the University of Vienna.
Read more about this topic: Austrian Art
Famous quotes containing the word education:
“Those who first introduced compulsory education into American life knew exactly why children should go to school and learn to read: to save their souls.... Consistent with this goal, the first book written and printed for children in America was titled Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes in either England, drawn from the Breasts of both Testaments for their Souls’ Nourishment.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)
“Since [Rousseau’s] time, and largely thanks to him, the Ego has steadily tended to efface itself, and, for purposes of model, to become a manikin on which the toilet of education is to be draped in order to show the fit or misfit of the clothes. The object of study is the garment, not the figure.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“If we help an educated man’s daughter to go to Cambridge are we not forcing her to think not about education but about war?—not how she can learn, but how she can fight in order that she might win the same advantages as her brothers?”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)