Children who turn six years old on or before September 1st, 2025 are required to attend school starting in the 2025-2026 school year and must be registered for school by their parents or guardians. Registration takes place through the process of school enrollment (Schuleinschreibung), which includes a determination of school readiness.

• Required Documents
• VBS Enrollment
• Early Enrollment

• Proof of residence (invitation to school enrollment or residence registration form)
• Child’s birth certificate
• Proof of citizenship (e.g., a passport)
• Documentation of the child’s social security number (e-card)
• Confirmation of kindergarten attendence
• In case after-school care is required: Employment verification and a completed After-School Care Statement of Need form

General Information

• Notice of eligibility for the VBS programme will be sent via e-mail (or by post if e-mail is not possible) .
• If your child is not eligible for the VBS programme you have the possibility to enroll your child in another class or at another school.
• School places are allocated by the responsible school quality manager.

Enrollment Procedure

1. The interest of parents/guardians and pupils in a bilingual school far outweighs the actual number of school places available. It is therefore inevitable that not everyone who wishes to enroll their child in a VBS primary school can be allocated a place.

2. Due to the fact that the number of school places do not meet the high demand, it is necessary to have a special enrollment procedure for the VBS schools, which involves an orientation talk with the child.

3. Understandably, only a brief impression of the child can be obtained during the course of this orientation talk. However, this factor is taken into consideration by the experienced team of experts, as well as by the local VBS commission. The orientation talk procedure was developed in cooperation with school psychologists at the Vienna Board of Education and external experts from the University of Graz, and incorporates the following aspects:

• social skills and emotional competence
• communicative strategies (flexibility within languages)
• communication skills in English and German

4. The localised VBS commission (made up of the head teacher, class and native speaker teachers, as well as supervisory personnel) decides upon the eligibility of the child after the orientation talk has taken place. The results are then passed onto parents/guardians electronically (or by post). School place allocation is the exclusive responsibility of the school quality manager, after statutory guidelines (siblings, location of residence) have been taken into account. Determination of school readiness is the sole responsibility of the head teacher.

5. In order to ensure the continued existence and assurance of quality within the VBS pilot project, it is of utmost importance that there is a balance of dominant English speaking and dominant German speaking pupils in every class. Only then can a successful bilingual education take place. Therefore the following factors are considered at the enrolment:

• eligibility (orientation talk)
• statutory guidelines (siblings, residential district/proximity of residence to the school, maximum number of pupils per class)
• best possible balance of children in the class with either German or English as a first language
• enough eligible children to fill a class

More information can be found on the website of the City of Vienna.

Through early enrollment, you can apply to enroll your child in Basic Level I of primary school before he or she has reached school age.