Like parents, like children: education is passed on

For example, only around 9 percent of all 25 to 44-year-olds whose parents completed at least one compulsory school achieved a university degree. For children of academics, however, this rate is around 61 percent, almost seven times as high. For the purpose of the presentation, the educational qualifications were divided into 4 categories (maximum compulsory school, apprenticeship/vocational secondary school (BMS), AHS/vocational secondary school (BHS) and university/academy). It was then compared which qualifications the respective parents and their 25 to 44 year old children had achieved. Result: For the most part, the respective offspring remained in their “boxes” or slid up a step.

36 percent of children of parents with a maximum of compulsory school qualifications only achieved at most a compulsory school qualification, while 42 percent managed an apprenticeship or BMS). In contrast, only around one in ten people progressed to the two highest levels of education. In contrast, six out of ten children of academics also completed a university degree – around 20 percent had an AHS or BHS-Matura as their highest qualification, and around one in ten had an apprenticeship/BMS.

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Strong parental influence

The strong influence of parents is also evident in an analysis of the prospects of success for completing an upper secondary school or a vocational middle or higher school or an apprenticeship. For this purpose, 120,000 educational careers of those students who attended the ninth grade for the first time in 2012/13 or 2013/14 were analyzed. Students with a so-called “strongly supportive background” (this includes the educational level, employment and income of the reference persons or the country of birth of the reference persons and students) had a significantly higher probability of completing a degree than those with only a “low supportive” background – this also applies when all other influencing factors such as gender, length of stay in Austria and school attended are kept constant.

In the case of a male student born in Austria who entered the ninth grade through the then secondary school, the probability of successfully completing an AHS upper level was 73 percent with a low supportive background, whereas with a strongly supportive background it was 88 percent. The type of school attended before is somewhat less influential – i.e. (then) secondary school or AHS lower school. The probability for a male student born in Austria with a strong supportive background to complete the AHS upper level was 88 percent after attending secondary school and around 95 percent after attending the lower level AHS (with other factors held constant).

“The course for an educational career is set early”

The influence of the previous school career becomes even clearer when you look at the transfer rates: 9 out of 10 students attend a school leading to the Matura after completing the lower secondary school level – but only 4 out of 10 after completing middle school. “Educational mobility between the generations is only weak in Austria and the course for the educational career is set early,” summarized Statistics Austria Director General Tobias Thomas.

When it comes to the overall level of education, the numbers change only slowly, but steadily: the most frequently completed training is still an apprenticeship: 32.6 percent of 25 to 64 year olds have completed one. “The teaching is still at the master level,” says Thomas. However, their share has recently declined. In second place are people who have completed middle and high school (30.4 percent) with stagnating values. Third place is occupied by university graduates with an increasing proportion at 19.7 percent, and at the bottom are people with a maximum of compulsory school leaving qualifications (17.3 percent) with declining values.