students with a greater degree of latitude within it. Hence, educational (and hence career) decisions can be made at an older age. Although the primary and secondary school system continues to be fundamentally based on the two-track idea, after a series of reforms in the 1970s and 1980s, ten- to fourteen-year-olds are no longer streamed into A and B groups in the Hauptschule. Graduates of this kind of school also have the opportunity to cross over into certain branches of the AHS track at the age of fourteen or to attend a series of different “higher vocational-technical schools” (Berufsbildende Höhere Schulen and Höhere Technische Lehranstalten), which have five-year programs of specialization in various branches of technology (HTL = Höhere Technische Lehranstalt) and business and commerce (HAK = Handelsakademie). Other than the less prestigious three-year Berufsbildende Mittlere Schulen, those schools allow graduates to move on to university. Shifts in enrolment patterns reflect these changes in the school system. In the mid-1960s, less than 10% of all students finished the university preparatory AHS track, and more than 66% of them were male. By the early 1990s, more than 30% of all students finished the AHS track and just above 50% of them were female. Furthermore, a second educational path was developed that permitted some students without a diploma from the university-track AHS to enroll in a university. As a general rule, the quality of Hauptschule education is high, especially in rural areas and small communities, where the schools have maintained their traditional social importance and where attendance at an AHS involves commuting considerable distances, or, for the inhabitants of more remote areas, boarding. In urban centers with a full spectrum of educational opportunities, the Hauptschule has become less popular, and parents who would not necessarily have enrolled their children in an AHS a few years ago have begun doing so. The increased enrolments have overburdened the AHS and created a shortage of students at the Hauptschulen and vocational-technical schools. In some areas, this trend has been strengthened by the number of children of foreign workers in compulsory schools. In 1991, for example, almost 30% of all school-age children in Vienna were children of foreign-born workers, whose mother tongue was not German. In some districts of the city, these children exceeded 70%. Although the children of long-term foreign workers frequently speak German well, the numbers of classes in which students with inadequate mastery