The Austrian school system aims to create the optimal conditions for successful learning and best possible training for all pupils. The focus of this goal must therefore be on high-quality teaching, which is provided by highly trained, committed and motivated teachers in a student-centred manner.
Ensuring the high quality of this teaching and continuously adapting it to the social environment is a constant challenge, especially in the face of rapid digitalisation, social change and growing global uncertainties. More than ever before, teachers are therefore called upon to fulfil this task effectively. As a profession, they have a shared responsibility to prepare young people for their role in future society and the world of work in the best possible way. In order to achieve this, they need modern and attractive framework and working conditions, but also opportunities to grow professionally and to effectively shape the necessary transformative and innovative processes towards a future-proof profession.
This is where the OECD study comes in and provides valuable data and impetus, whereby teachers are always understood as active and collaborative shapers of their own profession, who are in close dialogue with their social environment and with other professions.
The scenarios developed by stakeholders from the Austrian school system and other education experts, scientifically guided by the experts from the OECD Center for Educational Research and Innovation; provide an important databased foundation for the further development not only of the professional field, but also of teachers’ understanding of their profession. The aim is not to define fixed measures for a specific future, but to develop ‘desirable’ scenarios and use them as inspiration to set the course already today for targeted but adaptive and flexible future development.
The results of this study come at just the right time to support developments that have already begun to strengthen the image and attractiveness of the teaching profession and enable more diverse teaching careers (‘Klasse Job’), to sharpen the future job profile of teachers and the demands on the profession, to establish a holistic human resources strategy for the school system, to bring teacher training even closer to practice and to better equip future teachers with the skills they need for effective learning in a digital and heterogeneous environment.
It is now important to make use of the study results in an effective and targeted way, as an important input and basis for constructive dialogue between practitioners, school administration and education policy.
Director General Andreas Thaller,
Directorate General for Education Development and Monitoring, Federal Ministry of Education
Director General Margareta Scheuringer,
Directorate General for Staff Development, Teacher Training Colleges, School Maintenance and Legislation, Federal Ministry of Education