Evaluation of the ‘Promotion 2.0’ – VHS learning support at schools of Vienna

With the funding ‘VHS learning aid at schools in Vienna’ the City of Vienna launched an initiative to make it easier for children from socially disadvantaged families to participate in education and to increase educational equity. The VHS was commissioned to develop and implement the funding project.

Target group are Viennese pupils of the public New Middle Schools (NMS) and Academic Secondary Schools (lower Cycle).

Objectives of the project were among others:

• Improvement of school success through continuous consolidation of school knowledge and through the (further) development of learning techniques and strategies of the pupils,
• increasing equal opportunities in access to education and the
• establishment of an area-wide offer at all AHS and NMS locations in Vienna (as long as the corresponding framework conditions are in place).

The project was launched in 2015. In the meantime, it has been implemented as an offer in around 140 Viennese schools and around 1,200 courses with around 10,000 registrations per semester have taken place. In addition, there was an open learning programme at the VHS Vienna with about 16,000 visitors per semester.

With the start of the summer semester 2017 L&R Social Research carried out a first evaluation of the project. The evaluation referred to the target group, their parents or legal guardians and the learning supervisors and the schools involved as well as the VHS. The successful implementation of the offer, the cooperation between the individual players, the access to the offer by the target group and the progress supported by it, the effect of the previous offers, all these questions were part of the evaluation.

The results of the study were intended to answer the question as to how far the target group could be reached with the project and how well they or their parents were informed in advance. Particular attention was paid to the diversity of the pupils, i.e. the achievement of the pupils was examined according to various socio-economic factors as well as according to school type, school location, etc. In order to achieve the evaluation objectives, a variety of methods were applied. In addition to a secondary data analysis (school statistics, educational reports and studies) and analyses of the VHS internal data documentation, explorative interviews were conducted with key players of the project.

In addition, there were a number of other empirical surveys:

• Questionnaire survey among pupils
• Telephone survey of pupils and parents/guardians
• Online survey with tutors, teachers and principals of schools

Central results and information can also be found here.