This is shown by the report “Education in Numbers 2020/21” published by Statistics Austria on Thursday. Among other things, all students with only a five were automatically entitled to advancement at the schools, the oral Matura was only voluntary. Many universities also waived entrance exams.
For example, in the AHS upper grades, the proportion of students who were not allowed to advance to the next school level halved from around ten percent in the previous years to 5.1 percent in 2020. In the vocational higher schools, the proportion of those who failed dropped from around twelve percent in previous years to 6.7 percent and in the middle vocational schools from 14 to 15 percent to 9.8 percent. Decreases were also recorded at the (new) middle schools (from around three to 1.9 percent) and the lower AHS levels (from almost four to 1.1 percent).
Fewer people who remain seated
Responsible for this are likely to have been the much easier sit-down regulations. In this school year, for example, you were automatically allowed to move up with a grade five (in “normal” years this requires the approval of the class conference). Even with two or more “insufficient” one could go to the next class without a re-examination if the conference agreed – otherwise in these cases re-examinations have to be taken. If you passed all but one of the re-examinations, the regulation also applied again that you were automatically allowed to go to the next class with a five.
The successes in the matriculation examination also increased in the first Corona year. In the previous years, around 15 percent of the candidates who competed failed at the main Matura date in spring. In 2020 it was just under six percent. The number of high school graduation preferences also rose slightly (from 15 to 17 percent in previous years to just under 19 percent).
More students
Among other things, due to the Corona interruption of face-to-face teaching, the oral Matura 2020 (and later also 2021) only took place voluntarily. In 2020, a maximum of three written exams had to be taken, and the working time was extended by one hour. Half of the final grade of the last class was included in the written Matura grade (and in the case of an attempt also in the oral grade).
This also had an impact on the development of students: between 2016/17 and 2019/20 the number of regular students fell from around 281,000 to 265,000. In the winter semester 2020/21 it was 268,000 again. In addition to the higher success rate for the Matura, other factors probably also played a role: many universities did not take entrance exams in some subjects, and in times of crisis due to job loss or job insecurity, more people tend to flock to the universities or take up further training, for example master’s degree.
Source: Nachrichten
