Take a Step Into a Wider World

What is Vienna Bilingual Schooling?

  • Primary school education according to the Austrian curriculum in either German or English mother language
  • Part of the “Vienna Bilingual School” concept, reaching from Kindergarten through secondary education
  • Each class consists of children with German and children with English as their first or working language

Learning Goals

  • German and English as equivalent instructional languages
  • Increased knowledge of foreign language through constant use: Students learn both from teachers and from classmates who speak other languages
  • Intercultural learning, tolerance, and cosmopolitanism

Organization

  • First language literacy: In Vienna Bilingual Primary School, parents or legal guardians consult with the VBS team (head teacher, class teacher, and English native speaker teacher) to decide the language in which students first acquire literary skills. Students are placed in a German Group or an English Group, and language lessons take place in separate groups.
  • Acquisition of second language skills: Orally in the first grade, later also in writing
  • English as a working language during instruction: Team teaching for at least one lesson per week in English

Students

  • German-speaking children with good previous knowledge of the English language and a special interest in learning foreign languages
  • Children of English-speaking parents, whose mother- or working language is English and who possess previous knowledge of German
  • In order to accomplish the above-mentioned learning goals, classes are taught by Austrian primary school teachers with outstanding knowledge of English alongside Native Speaker Teachers with English as their mother language

Admission

For Austrian children, a pre-condition for acceptance is sufficient previous knowledge of English. Each applicant’s English knowledge will be determined by a short “orientation talk” during school enrollment. The teaching team will pose questions to your child and obserb whether he or she is comfortable in the second language.

Due to high demand and and limited number of spaces available in this program, a positive assessment talk does not constitute a guarantee of acceptance.