Only since autumn 2022 has a new compulsory subject been on the timetable for pupils in the first three classes of the lower AHS and middle school with “digital basic education”, and the next change is already planned: in the future it should be a focus from the 5th grade give up programming, as Chancellor Karl Nehammer (ÖVP) announced in his “Speech on the Future of the Nation”. Working groups have now been started in the education department.
Since the 2021/22 school year, pupils in the 1st grade of middle school and AHS have been given inexpensive laptops or tablets, and the compulsory subject “digital basic education” was introduced as a content-related counterpart. As Minister of Education Martin Polaschek (ÖVP) emphasizes, the next steps must now be prepared in order to be able to respond even better to digital developments in the future.
“With the focus on coding from the 5th grade, we will consistently take the next step to make Austria’s schools digital pioneers throughout Europe,” the minister is quoted as saying in a statement to the APA. For Digitization State Secretary Florian Tursky (ÖVP), this is the right approach in connection with “digital basic education” to introduce students to programming at an early stage. “In the long term, this will also counteract the shortage of skilled workers in IT professions and strengthen our business location.”
According to the Ministry of Education, the form in which programming is to be taught to the students in the future – whether as a focus in the subject “Basic digital education”, where coding is already part of the curriculum, or in a separate subject – is still open. In the working groups that have now started, it is to be worked out “in which way programming or coding can be integrated into the lessons in the best possible way from the 5th grade”, it says when asked. A timetable for implementation is also being drawn up.
In any case, the Ministry of Education sees the government’s “digital skills offensive” as a good basis: over 98 percent of middle schools, AHS lower grades and special schools are already taking part in the device offensive. The students get a cheap digital device, the schools have to develop a digitization concept. By the end of 2023, 100 percent of the federal schools (AHS, BMHS) should also have a fiber optic connection.
As a next step, there should be free access to the e-papers of the media represented in the Press Council for all pupils from the 7th grade upwards – in addition to the “integration of the obligatory and increased coding and programming”. As a measure in the fight once morest fake news, this is intended to promote the critical handling of information in the classroom and strengthen the willingness to engage in discourse.
And there should also be improvements in administration: school and parents should in future communicate via secure channels with E-ID login, school operations should be further converted to digital libraries, media centers, etc. According to the ministry, intensive work is also being done on digital certificates that should be available at any time.
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