Primary child education and care in Austria: Higher Quality through social investment approach?

Abstract

In an era of competitive knowledge economy and modern familyhood in developed countries including Austria, the implementation of social investment strategies within family and education policymaking can be witnessed. Research agrees upon their positive effects such as enabling parents, especially mothers, to work on a full-time basis by creating high-quality forma child care. In addition, children can profit from these services on a lifetime basis. Effective social investment requires adequate framework conditions in child education and care centres. In the wake of the ongoing pandemic, long-standing inadequacies in Austrian facilities have been brought forward by e.g. trade unions and non-profit associations. It is therefore questionable if mechanisms towards enabling social investment programmes have been created in a sustainable manner within the past two decades. This thesis explores the potential of two models of formal education and care for primary schoolchildren to meet the needs for effective social investment. The aim was to find out how the quality of these services reflect this policy approach. In detail, after-school care centres and whole-day schools were investigated. For an in-depth insight into their framework conditions, a qualitative method approach towards data collection and analysis was chosen. As a first step, legislations regulating institutional and structural framework conditions in Austrian federal provinces were examined and compared to each other. Furthermore, secondary data mainly in the form of quantitative information about these quality aspects were collected. Descriptive statistics offered a basic overview of the demand and supply situation in Austria. As a second step, primary data was gathered via semi-structured interviews with experts in the field of child education and care. This research method allowed an extensive investigation into their viewpoints on the institutional and structural quality of the cases. Applying a comparative approach enabled a thorough depiction of the differences and similarities between the selected models on a national as well as on a local level. The research shows that Austria is challenged by an insufficient investment in the field of family and education policy. Despite positive developments concerning the supply side, the most evident struggle in both cases is how to implement effective policy measures to improve the structural framework conditions. This thesis challenges social investment intentions towards high quality child education and care. It reveals that there are major dissimilarities across Austria when it comes to designing adequate care and education set-ups on a legislative as well as on an institutional level. This is based on a divided organisation and administration making the creation of qualitative services difficult between the federal republic and subnational units. In order to fully exploit the potential of social investments, the provision of child education and care has to be of high quality. Yet, the findings of this research display a significant personnel shortage as well as a demand for enhanced pedagogical training in both cases. Reasons for that are the lack of adequate pecuniary and societal recognition of pedagogues in particular. To counteract these realities, substantial and sustainable financing in Austrian formal child education and care is needed. In conclusion, the Austrian social investment approach did not improve the quality of these services for primary school children to a sufficient degree. As a result, the potential of qualitative formal child education and care cannot be fully exploited under the present circumstances.