Glaring shortage of music teachers in Austria
There is a glaring shortage of qualified music teachers in Austrian schools for 10 to 14-year-olds. Up to half of music lessons are currently not taught by qualified teachers, but provisionally by non-specialists.
The Austrian Music Council (ÖMR) writes that the situation at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna shows how urgently an expansion of training capacities is needed: Austria's largest music university can accept around 45 new students per year in the music education teacher training course. However, there is already a shortage of around 300 qualified music teachers for new secondary schools in Vienna and Lower Austria.
As an immediate measure, a new Master's degree course was launched at the Vienna University of Music in October, which trains lateral entrants with previous artistic knowledge and professional experience to become music teachers for secondary schools. However, this is by no means sufficient to ensure the quantity and quality of basic music education at schools in Austria, writes the ÖMR.
Since a reform entitled "PädagogInnen-Bildung Neu", the training of music teachers in Austria is to take place in close cooperation between teacher training colleges and music universities. In practice, however, implementation has been slow according to the ÖMR. The necessary harmonization of curricula and structures made the negotiation of cooperation agreements a time-consuming challenge.
