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Vocational Training Experts Monitor

Ensuring that education - and vocational training in particular - is able to cope with the changes of the future is indisputably one of the central challenges that will be facing Germany in the coming years. To accomplish this, the research and political sectors will also need the active support of experts who deal with the many aspects of education.

Germany's Federal Institute for Vocational Training ("BIBB") wants to make an additional contribution to these efforts. Taking a new approach, it plans to systematically bring expert opinions on topical issues and problems into the education and vocational training discussion. BIBB is setting up the Vocational Training Experts Monitor online survey system with this aim in mind. The Internet is particularly suited to the objective of the Vocational Training Experts Monitor because it enables quick responses to current issues and the resultant findings can be brought into the discussion without delay.

The new online survey system has been named the Vocational Training Experts Monitor, analogously to BIBB's Continuing Education and Training Monitor ("wbmonitor") which is used to survey continuing education and training providers. BIBB has another survey system - the Reference Company System (RBS) - which uses a fixed sample of firms. The creation of the Vocational Training Experts Monitor will now add the category "experts" to the circle of persons and institutions which BIBB surveys regularly.

Recruitment of participants and the first survey
Work done to date to set up the new system includes recruiting experts who are willing to participate in the survey, setting up a corresponding address file and conducting an initial abbreviated survey on the focus of the respondents' work and on the future of vocational training.

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Graph 1: Primary place of employment of the participating experts

The experts' background
When selecting the participating experts, BIBB took care to ensure the broadest possible spectrum of experience from the vocational training system's various areas of activity.

A total of 1,200 experts from the vocational training field agreed to participate in the Vocational Training Experts Monitor.

Graph 1 offers an overview of the bodies where the experts are employed. According to this graph, these experts work primarily at inter-company vocational training facilities (17 percent), private firms (15 percent), schools (13 percent), trade chambers and agencies responsible for vocational training (12 percent) and in employee organizations (10 percent). Experts from the administrative level of the state education sector account for nine percent, experts from universities, universities of applied sciences and colleges of advanced vocational studies comprise seven percent. Five percent are experts from professional associations, four percent come from employer associations or trade associations and four percent from government research centres. Three percent of the participating experts work at private research facilities. By nature, vocational training experts who work for a political party or in other segments of the public sector are fewer in number. They accordingly account for only a small part of the sample.

Outlook for the future

BIBB will start work on setting up its own online survey system during the second quarter of 2004. In the future, participating experts will be contacted several times a year and asked for their views on current issues. At this time, another survey is being planned for 2004.

The Vocational Training Experts Monitor is part of the Vocational Training Communications and Information System for Experts ("KIBB") that the Federal Ministry of Education and Research funds and is currently being set up at BIBB. The KIBB system is being realized in cooperation with BIBB's Needs Analyses, Training Supply and Demand Section (Section 2.1).

Last modified on: November 23, 2006

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Publisher: Federal Institute for Vocational Training (BIBB)
The President
Robert-Schuman-Platz 3
53175 Bonn
http://www.bibb.de

Copyright: The published contents are protected by copyright.
Articles associated with the names of certain persons do not necessarily represent the opinion of the publisher.