Austria has an area of 83,858 km2 and a population of approximately eight million. As in many other European countries, the population is aging and the number of pupils in compulsory schools started to decrease after the year 2000.
Austria is a federal state comprising nine province (Laender) governments and a federal government. General legislation for education, with the exception of preschool education, is made by the Federal Parliament. The distribution of different responsibilities, however, is quite complicated. The Federation, for instance, regulates the organizational structure of school authorities and the maintenance of compulsory schools by frame laws within which specified laws are made by the province Parliaments. The maintenance of post-compulsory and higher education, again, is a responsibility of the federal government.
In addition, until recently laws on school education required a two-thirds majority in the Federal Parliament. This requirement goes back – like the abovementioned complicated distribution of competence – to the conflicting conceptions of school organization and education in the First Republic (1918–1934) when the Constitution was drafted and came into force. There is no qualified majority requirement concerning higher education laws.
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Hackl, E. (2008). The Role of the Non-University Sector in Austrian Higher Education. In: Taylor, J.S., Ferreira, J.B., Machado, M.d.L., Santiago, R. (eds) Non-University Higher Education in Europe. Higher Education Dynamics, vol 23. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8335-8_2
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