Bundesinstitut für Berufsbildung (BIBB)

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44/ 2005
Bonn, 22.11.2005

Improving vocational training for youths and young adults in whose lives immigration has played a role:

Strengthen skills, improve qualifications, make use of potential!

Vocational Training for Youths and Young Adults in Whose Lives Immigration Has Played a Role is the theme of the special conference that the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training ("BIBB") and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation are hosting in Bonn on 23 November 2005. The motto "Strengthen skills, improve qualifications, make use of potential" is also the name of the programme. The latest findings from BIBB research are to provide a springboard for tapping into the current debate on the problems of adolescent and adult immigrants in initial or continuing vocational training which are to be discussed together with experts at the conference. Emphasis in this discussion is to be placed on the special potential that immigrants have to offer and that has seldom been perceived in a positive light, namely: these individuals' intercultural skills. In other words, their mastery of their native language and their familiarity with another culture are a "plus" that they can consciously incorporate into their work and that companies should foster and put to use.

The findings of the BIBB research project Intercultural skills of young skilled workers in whose lives immigration has played a role: Identifying these skills and their benefits in the working world show, for example, that:

• Immigrants' native language can be put to practical use not only in international occupational fields such as foreign trade, but also in doctor's practices and retail trade. A knowledge of other languages and familiarity with other cultures enables the individual not only to communicate with foreign customers or patients but also to understand what is being said "between the lines". Qualified workers with an immigration background are in a better position than native Germans to assess situations and inspire confidence in conversational situations 0 from initial contact to the conclusion of a deal, or in the mediation of conflicts.
• Superiors do not always appreciate these skills even though their benefits for the individual's company are obvious. Personal biographies in which immigration plays a role are frequently viewed as a deficit rather than as an advantage. This is not without implications for the respective individual: These persons themselves are not sufficiently aware of the advantages their backgrounds offer 0 only a fraction of them cite their intercultural skills in job applications. It is therefore necessary to make everyone involved more aware of the special skills of persons with an immigration background and foster the use of these individuals' potential.

However, vocational training precedes employment - and it is here that many young people with an immigration background meet with enormous difficulties. According to a survey conducted by BIBB and the Federal Employment Agency ("BA") of training place seekers who had registered with the BA in 2004, 

• Only 29 per cent of all applicants with an immigration background found an in-company training place, compared to 40 per cent of all German applicants;
• The chances of finding a training place are not equal even when applicants with an immigration background have completed the same level of schooling as competing German applicants. The placement rate for school-leavers with an immigration background who had completed lower secondary school was 25 per cent. This rate was 29 per cent among their German counterparts. This gap was even larger among youths with an intermediate secondary school certificate: Only 34 per cent of those individuals in this group with an immigration background found a training place, compared to 47 per cent of the German control group.

BIBB has analyzed the training rates of German and foreign youths on the basis of vocational training statistics. According to this analysis, 72,100 trainees in 2004 were foreign nationals. In other words, only 25 per cent of all foreign youths received training in the so-called "dual" training system that combines part-time vocational schooling with practical work experience. By comparison, the training rate for German youths was 59 per cent, more than double the rate of their foreign counterparts. According to these figures, young foreign nationals' prospects for vocational training have diminished noticeably since the mid-1990s. The training rate for this group has fallen from 34 per cent in 1994 to 25 per cent in 2004.

The consequences of difficult access to fully qualified training: A disproportionately large number of young people with a foreign passport do not earn formal vocational qualification. In 2003, 37 per cent of all 20-to-29-year-old foreign nationals in Germany had not completed any formal vocational training. This figure was 11 per cent among young Germans.

If this group is not to be permanently excluded from the labour market, young adults who have not completed any formal vocational training must be given a second chance to earn vocational qualification. Training measures for young adults who have no vocational qualification should take into account and build on not only the needs of these individuals but also their informally acquired skills and existing partial qualifications.

Vocational training for immigrants places special demands on instructors in the continuing vocational training field when their courses are attended by trainees of different national origins and when Germans and immigrants learn together. As the BIBB research project Requirements of trainers in continuing vocational training for learning groups with participants of German and other nationalities has shown, ⁰¹  not only must instruction personnel be specially trained for this task. In addition to providing training, a framework must also be created that meets the subject-related requirements of the courses and has a positive impact on them. Structural aspects such as rules for admission to vocational training and the duration of training programmes provide the foundation for an instructor's work.

Further information on this subject at the BIBB homepage

• German-language programme of the conference Improving vocational training for youths and young adults in whose lives immigration has played a role: Strengthen skills, improve qualifications, make use of potential at www.bibb.de/de/1427.htm 
• BIBB information in German on Vocational training for immigrants at www.bibb.de/tagung-migranten2005 
• The Friedrich Ebert Foundation's German-language Migration and Integration discussion group at www.fes.de/aspol