Print version Recommend this page Press release
40/ 2004
Bonn, 10.11.2004
Vocational training experts are optimistic - The "dual" vocational training system will be part of Germany's education landscape in the future too!
Despite the current problems on the training place market, vocational training experts continue to feel that Germany's "dual" vocational training system (which combines classroom instruction with practical work experience) has what it takes to meet the changes and challenges of the future. In fact, the experts' long-held concern about a possible erosion of vocational training has diminished considerably. Compared to 1997, they are much more convinced today that combining work experience with learning is the right way to teach young people an occupation that will be viable in the changing future. This is the conclusion drawn by a survey in which the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training ("BIBB") asked vocational training experts their opinion on how vocational training will develop through the year 2020.
Selected findings from the survey:
- In 1997, 37 percent of the respondents thought that the dual vocational training system would confine itself to the vocational trades field by the year 2020. This figure had fallen to just 30 percent in the 2004 survey.
- By contrast, more and more experts are convinced that by the year 2020 initial and continuing in-company vocational training will open the door to the same career paths as other forms of training: This opinion was expressed by 63 percent of the experts surveyed in 2004 - compared to only 45 percent of the experts asked in 1997.
- One important reason for this optimistic prognosis is the experts' assessment of the amount of learning that work will require in the future. In this survey, 63 percent of the experts (compared to 47 percent in 1997) assume that the way work is organized will itself generate direct impetus for learning new skills.
- This may be due to the increase in the number of experts who predict that the separation between employment and learning will have largely disappeared by 2020 (55 percent in 2004 as opposed to 44 percent in 1997).
- The percentage of those experts also increased who predict that skills learned "informally" in the course of the work process will also be certified, like those acquired through the formal vocational training system (75 percent in 2004, 66 percent in 1997).
- Despite this, the share of experts who fear that formal vocational qualification will be of ever less importance has not grown. Thirty-eight percent of the respondents held this opinion in 2004 - the same percentage as in 1997.
- The largest increase was seen in response to the question whether it will be possible to earn vocational qualification in other countries in the future. Eighty-three percent of the vocational training experts surveyed in 2004 (compared to 60 percent in 1997) expect there to be reciprocal recognition of vocational training - along the lines of a credit point system - by 2020.
