Open Access

Klaus Siller, Nikola Dobrić

• The Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF) has recently implemented a new curriculum for primary schools, including the introduction of a foreign language (L2) in primary education for the first time as an obligatory school subject (BMBWF, 2023). This change has raised concerns about the adequacy of the L2 proficiency of teachers tasked with implementing the new curriculum. To ascertain if there are any grounds for such concerns, a pilot study was conducted at one Austrian university college of teacher education to measure the current English language proficiency levels of pre-service primary school teachers, with English as the specific L2 of interest. This was deemed necessary due to attrition hypothesized as having occurred. The study utilized the Oxford Online Placement Test (OOPT) to assess the trainees' proficiency against the reference levels of the CEFR. The findings reveal a significant gap between the trainees' actual proficiency and the B2 level ascertained for them upon their high school graduation by the standardized national exam (i.e., the Matura in English or the equivalent Studienberechtigungsprüfung). The paper explores the implications of these findings for both educating future primary school teachers and for teaching L2 English in Austrian schools.