Preschool Attendance Often Depends on Place of Residence

If children are likely unable to follow the first-grade lessons in elementary school "without being physically or mentally overwhelmed," they must attend preschool according to the Compulsory Education Act. This is intended to compensate for developmental delays and prevent later academic failures. In practice, however, this is insufficiently achieved according to a study by the Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS). Whether children end up in preschool also depends heavily on the federal state.

Assignment to Preschool Varies Greatly by Federal State

There is a "high degree of social and regional inequality in preschool attendance," writes author Mario Steiner in his article in the "Austrian Journal of Sociology." This is problematic not only because a school year is lost due to the assignment. The study, for which Steiner examined the development of the school entry cohort of 2006/07 (around 83,500 children) over 15 years, also shows a clear connection between preschool attendance and a less successful educational path.

According to the Compulsory Education Act, preschool is actually intended only for children whose developmental status is delayed (such as in attention span, language comprehension, gross and fine motor skills, social-emotional maturity) or who cannot follow the first-grade lessons without special language support. However, whether a six-year-old child actually ends up in preschool depends heavily on their home federal state. Most recently (2022/23), the range extended from one percent in Styria and Burgenland to 26 percent in Salzburg.

Children with Migration Backgrounds More Often Affected

Children with a migration background or with parents with low formal education attend preschool more often across all federal states, but according to Steiner, the regional variations are also "enormous" here. Thus, the likelihood of being assigned to a preschool class is three to seven times higher for children of compulsory school graduates depending on the federal state than for children of academics.

The data also shows, according to the IHS researcher, that attending preschool and a less successful educational path are linked, even when factors such as parents' education, migration background, or the social mix of the school attended in middle school or lower secondary school are factored out. Former preschoolers later have significantly more often only a compulsory school diploma and less often the Matura - regardless of whether they were taught the year in a separate preschool class or integratively in a first-grade elementary school according to the preschool curriculum.

Preschool with Long-term Effects on Educational Path

For Steiner, the results are further evidence that "performance-homogeneous school forms" like preschool exacerbate social inequality. His study can only show correlations and not causes, and for children who were assigned to preschool due to developmental delays, poorer educational outcomes are "to some extent also to be expected." Nevertheless, it is permissible to conclude that with preschool and the school entry phase in its current form, "the goal of compensating for disadvantages and delays cannot be sufficiently achieved."

A "bold step" for the researcher would be to question the concept of preschools and school readiness altogether. He sees examples of a different approach in Germany and Switzerland, where school readiness is not assessed before the start of the school career but is understood as an educational mandate in the first school years. According to Steiner, the increasing diversity in the classroom is addressed there with individualization and internal differentiation, not with "special and extra schooling."

(APA/Red)

This article has been automatically translated, read the original article here.