The Austrian ‘Oberstufe’ and the English Sixth Form, and some Consequences for University Studies

THE COMPARATIVE STUDY of educational organisation in the I6 plus range is important for many reasons. Modern societies are basically confronted with similar major educational problems. These include the relative roles of specialist and general education; the changing of vocational training in the light of current technological developments; the structural changes necessary in the curriculum caused both by the expansion of knowledge and moves away from nineteenth-century subject divisions; and the part to be played by educational systems in modern, scientifically-based, democratic society. Comparative education will also aid that general movement towards an easier inter-change between students, teachers and academics of different countries-the kind of work which the Council of Europe carries out with its various educational and cultural Conventions. Although in education, as in history, the number of possible solutions is not infinite, the case of Austria will clearly demonstrate that similar problems provoke only similar, and not identical solutions. In fact, both England and Austria afford clear examples of how differences can be accentuated if educational change is planned not from general principles and considerations but 'with regard to the national tradition', that is, in a way that is most charitably described as 'empirical' and which at its worst looks like mere opportunism: surrender to various pressure groups, in the name of continuity, results in the propounding of fragmentary solutions, and real change is avoided. The different historical backgrounds of England and Austria, however, do create genuine difficulties. In England the weight of opinion since the I8th century has been against a strong central control of education: as Priestley wrote is a branch of civil liberty-which ought by no means to be surrendered into the hands of the civil magistrate. The history of education in England is part of the history of English individualism and voluntary organisations. In Austria, on the other hand, education was traditionally fostered by the state and by the municipalities: this was done, firstly, in the name of Enlightened Despotism, and it was later supported in the name of that continental liberalism with its ideal of state-controlled education, universally available, obligatory and free. What to the continental liberal looked like liberty, to the English liberal looked like despotism. Thus, in England today-as we see from the Plowden Report-the ghost of the old sectarian controversy is not yet laid: in Austria, it is the ghosts of Maria Theresa and of Metternich which haunt the offices of the Federal Ministry of Education. The Austrian Federal Ministry of Education legally enjoys a great control over Austrian secondary schools and, to a slightly lesser extent, over universities.* For a full under

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