Minderheitenschulwesen#

Schools for Minorities: the right to have their own schools was expressly granted to the "nations" ("Volksstaemme") of Austria by Article 19 of the Fundamental Law of 1867. Since the end of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy this right has only applied (on the territory of present-day Austria) to Carinthia (with a Slovene minority), Burgenland (Croat minority) and Vienna (Czech minority). At the time of the Monarchy schools for minorities in areas in Carinthia with a Slovene or linguistically mixed population were "utraquist" (=bilingual) in nature: Slovene as a language of instruction was only used in classes for beginners and in some subjects of the curriculum and was gradually superseded by German in the higher classes. "Nationality schools" (in which Slovene was the language of instruction throughout) were rare. In Burgenland, which at that time belonged to the Hungarian part of the Monarchy, native speakers of German or Croat had by and large to dispense with the use of their mother tongue at school, in particular after 1907 when the "Lex Apponyi" stipulated that, by the end of their fourth year of schooling, all pupils had to be able to speak and write Hungarian. In spite of the massive influx of Czechs during the period of industrialisation, Vienna refused to establish public schools for their children. However, owing to the efforts of the Komensky-Verein the Czech minority in Vienna established their own private schools.

After World War I, Austria undertook in the State Treaty of Saint-Germain (Articles 62-69) to establish adequate schools for minorities, but Carinthia still remained rather negative in its attitude towards minorities. In 1937 uniform legislation was passed which is at least partly still in force today: In all areas where 70 % of the population belong to an ethnic minority the schools use the language of that minority as language of instruction; if less than 70% of the population belong to an ethnic minority, schools are to be bilingual; in areas with a minority of less than 30% of the population the language of instruction is German but the language of the minority can be taught as an elective subject. In Vienna the Czech minority were given a generously developed public school system, particularly under the Treaty of Brno (1920), which entitled the German-speaking minority in Czechoslovakia to German-language schools and stipulated reciprocity in favour of the Czeck minority in Austria.

In the Second Republic, the State Treaty of Vienna (1955) again referred to the obligation to establish minority schools for Slovenes and Croats (Article 7); the Ethnic Minorities Act of 1976 and its subsequent amendments extended this obligation to schools for the Czech, Slovak and Hungarian minorities. After 1945, bilingual primary schools were generally introduced in all mixed-language areas in Carinthia, with each of the languages being assigned half of the time during the first three years and a gradual reduction of the minority language in favour of German in subsequent years. However, the Minorities' Schools Act for Carinthia of 1959 provided that pupils could only use Slovene as their language of instruction or be forced to learn Slovene as a compulsory subject if their parents or guardians approved. This regulation resulted in the creation of two different sections in most bilingual schools, with employment of additional teachers, repeated conflicts and various attempts to improve the situation by amending the law (1988, 1990). The Slovene minority were granted their first Gymnasium for Slovenes and a bilingual Handelsakademie commercial school in Klagenfurt in 1957and 1990, respectively. In Burgenland, where opinion was long divided among the Croats, the provisions adopted in 1937 remained in force until 1992, when a bilingual federal Gymnasium secondary school with a German-Croat and a German-Hungarian department was established at Oberwart. In Vienna the Komensky-Schulverein had to close all but one school (with approx. 150 pupils) for lack of demand.