Country Profile – Austria

Numbers

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Number of schools K-12	Number of teachers K-12	Number of students K-12	Number of computers per student K-12
5.712^[1]	121.335^[2]	1.110.813^[3]	2,9^[4]

Sources:
^[^1] Bundesministerium. Bildung, Wissenschaft und Forschung. Schulen, Klassen und Schüler/innen - Österreich 2016/1.
www.bmbwf.gv.at/Themen/schule/schulsystem/gd/schulstat_ktn.html (last access: 03.04.2020)
^[2] Bundesministerium. Bildung, Wissenschaft und Forschung. LehrerInnen - Österreich 2016/2017.
www.bmbwf.gv.at/Themen/schule/schulsystem/gd/lehrstat_oester.html (last access: 03.04.2020)
^[3] Bundesministerium. Bildung, Wissenschaft und Forschung. Schulen, Klassen und Schüler/innen - Österreich 2016/1.
www.bmbwf.gv.at/Themen/schule/schulsystem/gd/schulstat_ktn.html (last access: 03.04.2020)
^[4] Bericht des Rechnungshofes. IT-Betreuung an Schulen Reihe BUND 2018/47.
www.rechnungshof.gv.at/rh/home/home/IT_Betreuung_Schulen.pdf (last access: 02.04.2020)

Organisations

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Organization responsible for education	Role of the organization	Website
Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research	legislative issues curricula in compulsory education teachers’ service, wage, salary and retirement policy administrationin relation with public compulsory schools, vocational education, training institution at the secondary level and private schools	www.bmbwf.gv.at/en.html
Agency for Quality Assurance and Accreditation Austria	quality assurance of higher education institutions	www.aq.ac.at/en
Federal Institute for Research on Education, Innovation and Development of the Austrian School System	evaluations by collecting information about students, teachers and schools	www.bifie.at
Austrian Science Board	provides support to central and local authorities regarding tertiary education	www.wissenschaftsrat.ac.at
Provincial authorities	in charge of pre-primary schools provide staff for general compulsory schools implementation of the federal framework of legislation
Municipalities	Maintain school buildings for compulsory general education
Schools	Make the majority of the decisions regarding curriculum Lower autonomy in decisions regarding resource allocation Establishment of disciplinary and student assessment policies
Source: European Commission / EACEA National Policies Platform / Eurydice / Austria Overview: https://eacea.ec.europa.eu/national-policies/eurydice/content/austria_en

Austria educational institutions maintenance responsibilities

Source: Austrian Court of Audits

Funding of education

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Type of schools	Source of funds
	According to the joint data collection of UNESCO-OECD-EUROSTAT (UOE), public expenditure on education amounts to EUR 18,785.2 million in 2015. In addition, there is EUR 1,348.4 million from private sources. Across all ISCED fields, this results in a distribution of 93.3% public funding and 6.7% private funding.
Federal schools (academic secondary schools, vocational upper secondary schools, colleges)	Central government
Provincial schools (general compulsory schools)	Financed by provinces and municipalities (big share of this fundings comes from the federal budget)
ISCED 0	EUR 2,325.5 million is spent on the elementary sector (ISCED 0), with public funding accounting for 85.4% (EUR 1,985.2 million) and private funding for 14.6% (EUR 340.3 million).
ISCED 1	In the primary sector (ISCED 1), total expenditure on education amounts to EUR 3,259.6 million. In this area, EUR 3,112.3 million (95.5%) comes from public sources and EUR 147.3 million (4.5%) from private sources.
ISCED 2-4	In the secondary and non-tertiary post-secondary sector (ISCED 2-4), total expenditure in 2015 amounts to EUR 8,024.5 million. 94.2% or EUR 7,557.4 million comes from public sources and 5.8% or EUR 467.1 million from private sources.
ISCED 5-8	The total expenditure in the tertiary sector (ISCED 5-8) amounts to EUR 6,524.0 million. The share of public funding in this education sector is 94.0% (EUR 6,130.3 million), and 6% or EUR 393.7 million comes from private sources.
Source: https://eacea.ec.europa.eu/national-policies/eurydice/content/funding-education-1_en

Expenditure on educational institutions ISCED (2011) (Million EUR)

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Year	Expenditure	Primary education	Lower secondary education	Upper secondary education	Total
2012	Current expenditure	2 634,5	3 780,4	3 258,2	9 673,1
	Capital expenditure	58,7	66,1	71,3	196,1
	Total	2 693,2	3 846,5	3 329,5	9 869,2
	Share of capital expenditure (%)	2,2	1,7	2,1	2,0
2013	Current expenditure	2 808,9	3 903,8	3 343,1	10 055,8
	Capital expenditure	95,9	76,7	61,7	234,3
	Total	2 904,8	3 980,5	3 404,8	10 290,1
	Share of capital expenditure (%)	3,3	1,9	1,8	2,3
2014	Current expenditure	2 848,0	3 905,6	3 256,4	10 010,0
	Capital expenditure	132,3	109,0	67,3	308,6
	Total	2 980,3	4 014,7	3 323,7	10 318,7
	Share of capital expenditure (%)	4,4	2,7	2,0	3,0
2015	Current expenditure	3 969,0	4 023,7	3 324,2	10 316,9
	Capital expenditure	176,0	122,9	58,7	357,6
	Total	3 145,0	4 146,7	3 383,0	10 674,7
	Share of capital expenditure (%)	5,6	3,0	1,7	3,3
2016	Current expenditure	3 079,6	4 201,3	3 419,0	10 699,9
	Capital expenditure	218,8	137,2	56,0	412,0
	Total	3 298,4	4 338,5	3 475,0	11 111,9
	Share of capital expenditure (%)	6,6	3,2	1,6	3,7
Source: Eurostat (online data code: educ_uoe_fini01)

Investment plan for education / ICT in education

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Year

Amount in (€)

Main pillars of investments^[1]

Share of pillars (%)^[2]

2018-2023

n/a

(1) "Software" - pedagogy, teaching and learning content

(2) "Hardware" - infrastructure, modern IT management,
modern school administration

(3) "Teachers" - education, training

(1) 6% (2,44 Mio)

(2) 28% (11,21 Mio)

(3) 65% (25,6 Mio)

Sources:
^[1]Bundesministerium. Bildung, Wissenschaft und Forschung. Digitale Bildung Masterplan für die Digitalisierung im Bildungswesen.
www.bmbwf.gv.at/Themen/schule/zrp/dibi.html (last access: 02.04.2020)
^[2]Bericht des Rechnungshofes. IT-Betreuung an Schulen. Reihe BUND 2018/47.
www.rechnungshof.gv.at/rh/home/home/IT_Betreuung_Schulen.pdf (last access: 02.04.2020)

Procurement Procedure

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Public procurement processes are carried out at all levels by the government. An important share of purchases is being centralised by the Federal Procurement Agency (BBD), which is also in charge of the e-procurement system. For federal bodies it is compulsory to purchase through the BBD, however federal states, municipalities and public owned-bodies can choose to purchase approximately 270 000 standardized products and services through the Federal Procurement Agency.

Municipalities have the right to found limited liability companies in order to do joint procurements.

The supervisory role is fulfilled by the Austrian Court of Audit. It supervises the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of public procurement expenditure at the federal state and also local levels.

Teachers have a consulting role in the procurement procedure and how the public tender will look like.

All the schools have got dedicated panels where needs and stakeholder interests are discussed among teachers, external stakeholders, principals and parents / pupil representatives (Schulgemeinschaftsausschuss).

The principal of the school fulfils connecting functions between the educational institution and the local authority. The principal has the right to lead the discussion in the Schulgemeinschaftsausschuss, and has a consulting role for the local authority. The principal has the right to make suggestions for procurement but does not have any power of decision. This regulation also applies to the ICT procurement processes.

Schools do not exercise decision making right in case of educational technology purchases. For primary and secondary schools, the municipality is authorized to make the decision, while upper secondary schools the appointing authority is the federal government.

The price and the combination of technology with training are extremely important factors that are taken into consideration in case of educational technology tool procurements. Other important factors:

time saved for teachers
compatibility with the already used systems/software
teachers already have got the necessary skills to use the technology
technology is beyond state of the art

Source:
Public procurement – Study on administrative capacity in the EU Austria Country Profile
https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/policy/how/improving-investment/public-procurement/study/country_profile/at.pdf

Year	Primary education	Lower secondary education	Upper secondary education	Total
2012	2705,2	3835,7	3362,2	9903,1
2013	2929,2	3984,5	3419,2	10332,9
2014	2957,6	3984,0	3341,4	10283,0
2015	3112,3	4100,6	3390,5	10603,4
2016	3252,9	4278,5	3486,9	11018,3
Source: Eurostat (online data codes: educ_uoe_fine01)

Country Profile - Austria

Education Procurement in Austria

Numbers

Legislation of Education

Organisations

Funding of education

Public expenditure on education ISCED (2011) (million EUR)

Expenditure on educational institutions ISCED (2011) (Million EUR)

Investment plan for education / ICT in education

Procurement Procedure

LEA contact