Representations   Austria

Name

Aktion kritischer SchülerInnen - AKS
Action Critical Students

Type of Members

Individual school students

Amount of members

Over 1000 school students participate in AKS every year. Membership is voluntary and there is no membership fee.

General Assembly

Around 100

Budget

€ 72,000, funded by government. Members do not have to contribute.

Organisation's Staff

1 full time, 5 voluntary

Year of Foundation

1970s

Basic Structure

Basic structure

Other Student Unions

There are several organisations representing school student views in Austria. However the two biggest are AKS and Schülerunion.

Student Representations

At each school, each class elects 2 class speakers. All student of the school elect the school speakers team, which consists of 3 people. The school speaker team can vote on topics concerning their school within a board of 3 parent and 3 teacher representatives.

On national and regional level, there are official bodies of representations, called LSV (LandesschülerInnevertretung - Regional Board of Students) and the BSV (BundesschülerInnevertretung - Federal Board of Students). The LSV's executive body is made up of one representative per school. BSV's executive body is made up of three representatives per LSV.
(The "SchülerVertreungenGesetz" is the law which regulate this.)

Since these structures are almost unknown to school students and often mainly do paperwork for the Ministry of Education, there are several organisations besides the official structures, which organise students.

Students at School Level

The student representatives of each school are included in a lot of decisions concerning their school. On a federal land and national level the student representatives can attend meetings or are invited to meetings that discuss the educational system. However, neither happens very often.

Students in Municipal or Governmental Bodies

They can attend meetings on the federal land level.

Success

Usually, students are listened to but their opinion isn’t valued much.

Hurdles

The problem is that students generally aren’t heard much, even though there are a lot of laws concerning student representation.

Issues

Project
School Systems
Representations
Tools
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