University Colleges of Teacher Education

Teacher education in Austria is divided into the teaching qualification at primary level and the teaching qualification at secondary level (secondary schools or colleges for higher vocational education). Public and private university colleges of teacher education offer teaching qualifications at primary level, which have been established as four­year (eight­semester, workload 240 ECTS credits) bachelor's (Bachelor of Education, BEd) and one­year (two­semester, 60 ECTS credits) master's (Master of Education, MEd) degree programmes.

There are nine state-run University Colleges, e.g. in Lower Austria, Upper Austria, Salzburg, Tyrol, Styria, Vorarlberg, Carinthia, and two in Vienna as well as five private institutions maintained by the dioceses of Graz, Innsbruck, Linz and Vienna and by a foundation in Burgenland.

For the teaching qualification at secondary level a new teacher training system has gradually been introduced since 2013. The higher education area has been subdivided into four different teacher training networks (Entwicklungsverbünde):

• Teacher Training Network West
• Teacher Training Network Centre
• Teacher Training Network South-East
• Teacher Training Network North-East

Within these cooperation networks university colleges of teacher education and universities offer the new teacher training programmes at tertiary level in close cooperation with each other. The teaching qualification at secondary level has been established as four-­year (eight­-semester, workload 240 ECTS credits) bachelor's (Bachelor of Education, BEd) and one­-year or two-­year (two-­ to four-­semester, 60­120 ECTS credits) master's (Master of Education, MEd) degree programmes, depending on the type of secondary education.