New middle school

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New middle school (NMS)
school types
Country Austria
Type of school (general) Lower secondary school
ISCED level 2
Classification (national) General education school / General education middle school / General education middle school  (12.1)
requirement Elementary school or other equivalent school
Duration 4 years
Levels : 5th - 8th School level (1st – 4th grade)
Standard age 10–14
Graduation none
School types (curricula) Normal form, music NMS , sports NMS , ski NMS , with school level resolution , with Hungarian / Slovenian / Croatian language of instruction
number 323 -  (2011/12)
student 34,324 -  (2011/12)
Model tests in the area of ​​10 to 14 year olds (Code 12.1), replaces the secondary school until 2015 / 16–2018 / 19

The New Middle School is a school type of middle education in the Austrian education system and has been run as a regular school since autumn 2012 . With the 2015/16 school year, all secondary schools were converted to new secondary schools using a step-by-step plan.

From school trial to regular school

Removal of the name Hauptschule . Since the 2015/2016 school year, the term New Middle School has generally been used in Austria .

Originally, the new middle school was supposed to replace the AHS lower level and the secondary school in the long term as a comprehensive school. As a result, in the foreseeable future, as in many other European countries, the students should study together in lower secondary education and only then attend various secondary schools . Considerations about this had been going on for several decades, but these were politically unenforceable , mainly due to the resistance of the ÖVP .

In the school year 2008/2009, the school trial New Middle School started throughout Austria , mainly at the previous secondary school locations (introduced in § 7a School Organization Act  - SchOG). This may only be implemented if two-thirds of the students' teachers and legal guardians agree in principle. In addition to the 2nd, 3rd and 4th secondary school classes, there was also a 1st class of the new middle school in this school year , in the following years the secondary school will gradually come to an end.

Originally it was officially said: “Basically only the best and - due to the voluntary nature of the program - also the most motivated teachers will teach at the Neue Mittelschule.” While this is partly true, it was abandoned (at least in the province of Burgenland), as announced at the end of June 2010 has been. In fact, the Ministry of Education no longer spoke of voluntariness either.

In relatively small classes with a division number of 26, new forms of teaching and learning are used; supervision by two teachers in the main subjects should guarantee individualized and differentiated teaching. The curriculum of the AHS lower level applies (5th / 6th and 7th  grade , largely corresponding to that of a Realgymnasium ), and the educational goals of the Hauptschule or the general secondary school. In general, teaching techniques for independent learning is a priority, as is the ability to present the knowledge you have acquired. Children with more learning skills should help their classmates who are less able to learn and thereby acquire additional skills.
In the subjects German, mathematics, English, sometimes also in biology or geography, academically trained teachers from the BMHS or AHS area should be used to support . However, according to the Ministry of Education, only compulsory school teachers will continue to teach at 22 percent of the new middle schools in the 2010/11 school year.

At the end of the 2011/12 school year, the school trial ended. Instead, the New Middle School has been run as a regular school since autumn 2012 . The necessary legal basis for this was created with an updated version of § 3 SchOG and the new § 21a-g SchOG. In October 2011 it was announced that by 2015/16, at the latest by 2018/19, all secondary schools will be gradually replaced by new secondary schools.

The new type of school is supposed to abolish the - critically seen - early setting of the course in education at 10. This is intended to break through the classic compulsory education path elementary school - secondary school - polytechnic school - apprenticeship or further school attendance. Together with measures such as the planned secondary school leaving certificate, which is to be obtained with the completion of the NMS and the AHS lower level, the school career of a student should only be assessed in the course of the intermediate level. Since the qualifications of HS / BMS teachers and teachers from higher schools have also been aligned in the course of professionalization in the teaching profession since 2001, the new middle school is to represent a more modern and more flexible school form compared to the Hauptschule overall in terms of educational content and methods. At the same time, it also represents a harmonization with foreign education systems in the context of the Lisbon strategy and the cohesion and free movement concerns in the EU.
On the other hand, the school type - in combination with the concept of cooperative middle school between a HS and AHS - is intended to cope with the continuing decline in the number of pupils enable the 2nd  generation of pill kinks to adapt the school locations to changing requirements.

Curricula

The curricula are identical to those of the AHS lower level. However, they can also be changed within the framework of school autonomy . Changes are made much more frequently than in the AHS lower level, where mostly only the upper level curricula are changed. This means that the training of individual focal points can already take place in the lower level.

In addition to the normal form ( new middle school , regulated according to §21b SchOG), there are also some special curricula (school forms):

criticism

An initial evaluation of the New Middle School in March 2015 showed that the new type of school would not have brought the hoped-for improvements in performance or more equal opportunities. The report presented by the then Education Minister Gabriele Heinisch-Hosek states that the level of the NMS is on average not higher than that of comparable secondary schools and that there are even doubts as to whether the secondary school level is actually achieved at all locations. According to the system of educational standards in mathematics , the NMS achieved an average of 496.7 points, the Hauptschule however 515. Even taking into account social factors such as education of parents, migration background and colloquial language, the Hauptschulen achieve a better result.

Based on this, the Court of Auditors criticizes that the very high costs of the NMS (teacher staff costs per student of EUR 7496, compared to AHS with EUR 4815) have not led to any improvements in the area of ​​professional performance and interdisciplinary skills and encourages the very expensive team -Teaching to reduce. Even before that, the Court of Auditors had criticized the fact that the new middle school trial had been introduced into the mainstream school system "contrary to the legal requirement for compulsory scientific monitoring and evaluation of the model trials".

The cultural conflicts at the New Middle Schools were repeatedly referred to as "Kulturkampf". The ombudswoman for questions of values ​​and cultural conflicts in the Ministry of Education , Susanne Wiesinger, classifies "almost all public new secondary schools" in Vienna as hotspot schools in which cultural conflicts and insufficient performance predominate.

See also

Web links
  1. ↑ locations , neumittelschule.at (current stock)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Austrian school systematics, status 2013/14, pdf , bmukk.gv.at, pp. 6–7
  2. ↑ Schools in the school year 2010/11 by type of school , Statistics Austria
  3. ↑ Schoolchildren 2010/11 by detailed type of education and gender ( memento of the original from May 13, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.statistik.at archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Statistics Austria (pdf)
  4. ↑ § 7a SchOG Z.2
  5. ↑ 25 questions on the NMS (old version), question 22 (PDF; 40 kB) website of the Ministry of Education, accessed on January 8, 2011
  6. ↑ Commentary by the others: Reform model for compulsory happiness. Guest comment in Der Standard , print edition 26./27. June 2010, accessed on January 8, 2011
  7. ↑ 25 questions about the NMS (new version), question 22 website of the Ministry of Education, accessed on January 8, 2011
  8. ↑ § 7a SchOG Z.5
  9. ↑ New middle school often inadequately implemented. In: Die Presse , print edition January 12, 2011. Retrieved January 13, 2011.
  10. ↑ New Middle School: Seven grades should reduce "Not enough". March 2, 2012, accessed March 2, 2012 .
  11. ↑ Fixed timetable for new middle school. Retrieved October 25, 2011.
  12. ↑ Brief information on the NMS , neuemittelschule.at
  13. ↑ Corinna Geppert: Pupils at the educational transition threshold for secondary level I. Transfer and progression patterns in the context of the new middle school in Austria. Budrich UniPress, Leverkusen 2017, ISBN 978-3-86388-745-2 .
  14. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from January 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bmbf.gv.at
  15. ^ Court of Auditors: Saving at New Middle School. In: derstandard.at. April 28, 2016. Retrieved December 17, 2018 .
  16. ↑ Not better than secondary school: NMS disappointed. In: diepresse.com. March 3, 2015, accessed December 18, 2018 .
  17. ^ Bernhard Gaul: New middle school fails: Court of Auditors advises to save. April 28, 2016. Retrieved December 17, 2018 .
  18. ↑ Strong criticism of the new middle school. In: derstandard.at. December 9, 2013, accessed December 17, 2018 .
  19. ↑ Is there a culture war in schools? September 11, 2018, accessed September 10, 2019 .
  20. ↑ Director on Islam in School: "Consequence is interpreted as racism" - derStandard.at. September 11, 2018, accessed on September 10, 2019 (Austrian German).
  21. ↑ Education policy: “It's about a lot - just not about children”. In: The press. September 10, 2019, p. 7 , accessed on September 10, 2019 .