Bundesinstitut für Berufsbildung (BIBB)

Challenges facing educational policy

Let us begin by taking a look at some of the general conditions governing the development of the educational system which are also of crucial importance to the vocational education and training opportunities afforded to young people from a migrant background.
The German population is shrinking and ageing. The number and proportion of younger staff in training and workers will fall continuously after 2010. There will be a substantial increase in the proportion of older people, both in overall terms and in the world of work.
Considerable training endeavours for both young and old are required if the implications of this demographic development are to be overcome. In addition to this, we need a consistently high number of immigrants whose integration will need to take place primarily via education and training.

At the same time, both the economy and society are subject to constant and rapid change. This change is described in terms of such keywords as the knowledge and service society, informatisation, ecologisation and internationalisation.

The consequence of all this is the further suppression of tasks involving simple skills and auxiliary work activities. Employment opportunities for people with educational deficits will continue to deteriorate. The requirement for highly and broadly trained people will grow further.

The challenges facing educational policy are clear.

As many people as possible will need to receive as high a level and as broad a base of training as possible. And these people must continue to learn.

People with a broad general education and vocational education and training and higher education qualifications are needed. A much broader level of participation of younger and older people in lifelong learning, throughout the course of their lives but particularly during the whole of their working lives, is needed.

It is therefore fatal that the expansion in education seen in the 1970's and 1980's began to stagnate at the beginning of the 1990's. The upwards trend of our level of educational poverty puts us in a shamefully bad position in internationally comparative terms.

20 to 25 percent of young people aged fifteen achieve important basic competences only at the lowest level. The national average for pupils from a migrant background is a shocking 40 percent. Too few young people and too few young migrants in particular reach a higher or the highest level when acquiring basic competences. One of the reasons for this is the particularly strong correlation between educational success and the family environment in Germany.

Germany has now become the only OECD country in which the skills level of younger workers - measured by educational qualifications - fell between 1991 and 2003 and one of the very few OECD countries in which, as a consequence, younger people tend to be worse qualified than older people.

The proportion of those leaving school without a certificate remains stable at around 8 percent. For young foreigners, the figure is a shocking 17.5 percent.

The proportion of young adults without a vocational qualification has risen slightly compared to the 1990's. The figure for young people not from a migrant background is 15%, the proportion for the comparative group of young people from a migrant background being more than two and a half times higher at a dramatic level of 41%.

The more or less stagnating proportion of just over 20% of higher education graduates within the same age group means that Germany is bringing up the rear in the OECD. We move up the table a little if consideration is accorded to the fact that a further 10 percent gain high quality continuing vocational training qualifications, although we remain in the bottom quarter. Such figures are, however, only a little more than half as much respectively for persons from a migrant background.

Employee participation in continuing training continues to fall well behind what is required. Depending on the definition, approach and statistical basis adopted, the figure is between 12 and 40 percent, although always remaining in the bottom third in European comparative terms. Continuing training participation of persons from a migrant background is significantly below even these figures.

The gravest concern is, however, the virtual complete lack of any dynamism in Germany when it comes to developing participation in education. In nearly all other OECD countries, such rates of participation have been rising on a continuous basis for years from various initial levels.

Against such a background, the objectives to be pursued via the necessary reforms are largely clear and undisputed. The National Educational Report and international comparisons make them obvious, the latest reminder coming in the form of the OECD report "Education at a glance".

The following aims are relevant to our topic:

• There needs to be a significant decrease in the proportion of young people failing either in school or outside school.
• A clear loosening of the particularly strong correlation in Germany between social origin and educational success needs to take place. Sustainable improvement should in particular be brought about in the educational opportunities for immigrants and their children, whom this country so urgently requires.
• Very many more young people need to acquire basic general educational skills at a high and at the highest level of competence.
• There needs to be a significant increase in the proportion of young people who have completed vocational education and training or higher education qualifications.

This list, by no means complete, makes significant demands of policymakers as well as of society, trade and industry and individuals.
If Germany wishes to retain its international connectivity and remain competitive in international terms and if the aim is to secure the life and career chances of the coming generation in a sustainable way, then a new educational expansion covering all educational areas and all sections of the population will be required.

The list also makes it clear that the vocational education and training system is not the only place where decisions will be taken on the limits placed on and leeway accorded to the integration of young people and young adults into vocational training. Effective VET reforms will need to constitute part of a harmonised and coordinated reform of the whole of the educational system. Particular attention needs to be focussed on ensuring that transitions and connections at the interfaces between educational areas work well and do not lead to any loss of momentum.

The PISA shock has put a whole series of actions in train. Debate and educational policy activities are rightly centring on early support, all-day schooling, binding educational standards, the independence of schools and quality development. More and more good examples are showing how the objectives of an educational reform may be achieved.

It is my strong hope that all of this will permeate its way through sufficiently broadly to the grass roots of the educational landscape.

Early support

More than a quarter of children and young people of school age are from a migrant background. The younger the age group, the greater the proportion. In the under-6 age group, the figure is one third.

The significance of the integration task will thus continue to increase regardless of the extent of further immigration. Integration always ultimately also means equality of opportunity and plays a central part in education and training.

The current hurdles being faced by children and young people from a migrant background are, however, particularly high. Although no one would wish to disavow that local government, the federal states and the Federal Government are undertaking a wide range of endeavours, some of which have met with considerable success, to foster the integration of these children and young people, we need to recognise that our efforts hitherto have obviously not proved sufficient.

However we define the pertinent facts and circumstances, whether this be in terms of disadvantage, inequality of opportunity or lack of integration success, these begin well before the transition from school to vocational education and training.

Only a comparatively small proportion of children under the age of four from a migrant background attend a day-care child facility, for example, although we know that good support in early childhood considerably improves educational opportunities. Experiences gained from across the world have proved that this is particularly true of the children of migrants.

The significance of high-quality early support and education for subsequent phases of education extending all the way to the capability and readiness for continuing training at an advanced age has long since been recognised and supported by a good body of evidence. Every euro invested here provides a return over a period of 50 to 60 years. For children afforded such early support, this return includes such aspects as a lower crime rate, a more successful educational and occupational career, a higher income and the attendant higher taxation and better health. The inverse is also true, the economic and social damage occasioned by the failure to provide early support being reciprocally high.

The consequences of such insights are, however, only being drawn in a half-hearted fashion at present.

The current political debate is focussed in too one-sided a manner on the family, equality and demographic policy aspects, thus placing too much emphasis on the care aspect. The problems associated with migration, however, make it very clear that our main attention needs to be shifted to the educational and integration policy dimension of providing early educational support.

If we wish to put an end to the shameful circumstance that children from migrant families and from so-called educationally disconnected levels of society have a much lower degree of educational opportunity here than is the case in other parts of the world, then the main thing we need is high-quality early education.

This is not merely a matter of all-day childcare places and better facilities. A particularly high level of emphasis needs to be placed on highly qualified specialist staff and high-quality educational concepts for the early stages of education.

Within this context, it is completely unacceptable that training standards for nursery teachers working in institutions providing early support are lower than those applied in the training of primary school teachers and that the work carried out by the former is of less value to us in terms of qualifications requirements and payment than for example an upper secondary school teacher.

In internationally comparative terms, an extremely marked deficit in performance may be observed in the case of pupils from a migrant background as early as the end of primary school. The fact that we in Germany have succeeded much less well in providing these children with early, systematic and consistent support and fostering their acquisition of the written German language and their multilingualism is not the only reason for this, although it is a major cause.

Within the structured school system, this means that children from a migrant background attend an intermediate or upper secondary school significantly less frequently than other non-migrant members of their age cohort. This in turn is a major factor in determining that a quarter of young people from a migrant background attend a school in which the majority of their fellow pupils are also from a migrant background.

The result of this segregation and the lack of successful individual and target group specific support is that the proportion of foreign youngsters who fail to obtain a school leaving certificate is twice as high as the figure for young Germans.

The reason I mention these facts is that they place a considerable burden on the vocational training opportunities of young migrants, and not only on these.

We need to adopt the realistic view that sustainable improvement in the vocational education and training opportunities of these young people begins with successful support in nursery school and at school and will only be partially achievable if such support is not in place.

Transition management from school to training

This is an area where the VET stakeholders can and need to make a major contribution, at least in school.

Although the cooperation which takes place between schools and companies aimed at improving vocational orientation, apprenticeship entry maturity and training preparation is certainly an area where real progress has been made recently, national and unreserved cooperation on the part of all responsible parties and all those involved is not yet in sight. Genuinely sustainable structures bundling the resources for vocational orientation and VET preparation within a coordinated regional "Transition management from school to training" and with the aim of providing "rounded support" are not yet in place, either for young people from a migrant background or for other target groups requiring particular support.

In order to reach such a point, there is a need for a significantly more intensive and more systematic level of cooperation between general and vocational schools, VET and youth support agencies, companies, chambers, employment agencies and local government which extends beyond their areas of remit. There is only limited readiness on the part of the Federal Government and federal states to create the necessary legal framework of competence and support conditions.

At this point, two essential factors for the success of integration into vocational education and raining become apparent and, to repeat myself, these do not merely apply to young people from a migrant background.

• Firstly, we need to understand and structure the whole process of education from education in early childhood to initial training as a coherent process of competence development. The continuous and uninterrupted flow of this process essentially depends on the interaction of the various phases and areas of education, particularly at interfaces and transitions. If we wish to achieve sustainable success, nursery schools and primary schools, primary schools and secondary schools, secondary schools and vocational education and training all need to be viewed and structured as interrelated phases of education.
• Secondly, success in this area will be largely determined by the willingness and capability of those involved in all areas and at all levels of the educational system to enter into cooperation. Confusion regarding areas of responsibility extending as far as the regional and local level and an attendant lack of a joint understanding of education and learning is, however, stubbornly preventing this.

To say it again: there are many good examples, but a lack of broad-based implementation. Or to labour the point and express matters in somewhat polemic terms: we know exactly what we need to do, but too few people are pursuing the matter with the necessary emphasis and sustainability.

"Waiting loops"

A lack of apprenticeship entry maturity or at least considerable competence deficiencies on the part of many school leavers represents one side of the problem. This affects young people from a migrant background disproportionately. The other side of the coin, probably more significant in quantitative terms, is the under supply of in-company training places which has now become chronic.

The intention here, however, is not to direct any accusations at any particular doorsteps. We have a realistic expectation of up to 600,000 new training contracts for 2007, more than 90 percent of these being in-company. This cannot be considered a low figure and certainly does not provide any evidence for the assertion sometimes levied that the companies are sometimes turning their backs on the dual system of vocational education and training. Since 1995, participation in in-company training and company training rates have remained relatively stable, although they have for some considerable time fallen far short of what is required to balance supply and demand on the training places market.

In recent years, this has led to a situation where well over 40 percent of both male and female apprenticeship applicants registered via the employment agencies have flowed into more or less acceptable alternatives to company vocational education and training. Notwithstanding this, an estimated 100,000 of each continued to seek an in-company training place without officially being registered as applicants.

For this reason, the number of so-called old applicants - a term used by BIBB to describe young people endeavouring to obtain an in-company training place via the employment agencies for at least the second time - exceeded 300,000 for the first time in 2006.

This has led to the expansion of a "transitional system" between school and vocational education and training which has seen between 450,000 and 500,000 young people per year in each of the past few years undertaking courses which do not predominantly lead to utilisable vocational qualifications. For this reason, VET jargon speaks of unproductive "waiting loops".

All young people, but especially those young people from a migrant background, continue to be affected by the extremely fraught nature of the training places market, a situation which is set to continue.

A few figures.

• Trainees as a proportion of young foreigners fell from 34 percent in 1994 to 24 percent in 2005. The corresponding figure for young Germans was nearly twice as high at 58 percent and had only seen a slight fall during the same period.
• According to surveys conducted by BIBBB, only 40 percent of school leavers from a migrant background seeking dual training actually achieved this aim in 2006. The figure for school leavers not from a migrant background was 54 percent.
• There is a disproportionately frequent flow of 26 percent of training place applicants with a migrant background into the so-called transitional system. The figure for non-migrant applicants was 19 percent.
• More than 20 percent of training place applicants from a migrant background drop out of the educational system, either ending up unemployed or commencing unqualified casual work. The figure for the comparative group is 15 percent.

The capacity of the German system of vocational education and training for integration

These figures provide evidence of severe barriers to opportunity for young migrants seeking to make the transition from school to vocational education and training.

This situation is doubtlessly also a consequence of a failure to achieve integration within the upstream phases of education. But, as surveys conducted by BIBB show, this is not the only reason.

Even if comparisons are undertaken between groups with the same school leaving certificates, similar levels of school achievement and a comparable level of search intensity, clear differences in opportunity become apparent.

Only 25 percent of young migrants in possession of a lower secondary school leaving certificate and registered at the agencies find a training place. 29 percent of lower secondary school leavers not from a migrant background achieve this.

In the case of intermediate secondary school leavers, the comparable figures are 34 and 47 percent respectively.

Good marks in mathematics seem to be a solid indicator of success in the search for a training place, 41 percent of migrants who have achieved such marks ending up in company training. The comparative figure for those not from a migrant background is 64 percent.
All this provides a clear picture. Higher level school qualifications have considerably less impact on the training opportunities of young migrants than is the case with the comparative group of young Germans. The added value of "enhanced opportunity" - created by the achievement of an intermediate secondary school leaving certificate or by good marks at school - has a much smaller effect for young migrants than for the corresponding cohort not from a migrant background.

The lower level of school leaving certificates and less good performances achieved on average by young migrants are not, therefore, the only explanations for these clear differences in opportunity.

Available data does not permit any final conclusions to be drawn in respect of the question as to which factors bring about this discrimination.

Objects of debate include such areas as the significance of social networks in the search for training places, the belief that the placement tests carried out by companies may not be culturally neutral - producing a discriminatory result even if this is not intended - disadvantages in the evaluation of application documentation and job interviews.

For all these reasons, the displacement process on a market where apprenticeship places are in short supply is affecting young migrants particularly badly.

The conclusion to be drawn is that vocational qualification of young migrants does not yet constitute a self-evident component part of the educational system. The lack of training opportunities tends to be a disintegrating factor and thus causes social costs extending well beyond such costs occasioned by a shortage of skilled workers.

The capacity of the German system of vocational education and training for integration has rightly been praised, but this is one area where it has not yet passed the acid test.

BIBB proposals within the context of a National Integration Plan

In its report for the "Education, training and training opportunities" working group, part of the preparations for the National Integration Plan, BIBB has submitted a series of proposals for harmonised, differentiated and extensive support activities. These could help integrate young migrants better into the dual system of vocational education and training.

At the same time, however, we would wish to emphasise the particular importance of early and extensive vocational guidance and practical occupational support in general schools.

We recommend an initiative to raise awareness of staff responsibilities for ethnically and culturally neural procedures when evaluating the aptitude of applicants from a migrant background, this to be based on the experiences gleaned from the Vocational Qualification Networks (BQN).

We call for greater consideration to be accorded to the specific needs of migrants in basic vocational training courses and for these measures to focus on training elements which offer connectivity and transferability wherever possible.

We recommend the fostering of fully qualified training for young migrants within a training programme conducted nationally and in a company related way or the inclusion of migrant specific support elements in existing programmes and programmes currently being planned as well as within initiatives aimed at the mobilisation of in-company training places and at qualifications related VET in other forms of training.

We consider that activities specifically oriented towards migrants, aimed at the prevention of dropout and including a differentiated deployment of concomitant training support assistance, require significant strengthening.

We propose a national initiative for the consistent, modular and in-service second-chance qualification of young adults without a vocational qualification, this to include a support element specifically oriented towards migrants.

We recommend clear regulations for the recognition and, where appropriate, crediting of school and vocational qualifications from the country of origin.

Finally, we recommend that the intercultural potential and competences which young migrants very frequently possess when commencing vocational education and training be made much greater use of and be lent support, whilst at the same time making companies much more aware of the value of these competences.

I know that such a comprehensive proposal represents an extremely demanding package in times where finances are tight. But I also know that the costs will be much higher if we continue to tarry.

And I am equally sure that such an extensive initiative for the vocational education and training of young migrants is essential if we really wish to achieve the objectives set within the National Integration Plan.

Further information online

Informationen zur Fachtagung "Vielfalt in Ausbildung und Arbeit"
im Internetangebot der KWB - Koordinierungsstelle Weiterbildung und Beschäftigung e.V.

Erscheinungsdatum und Hinweis Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

Publication on the Internet: May 9, 2007

URN: urn:nbn:de:0035-0203-5

Deutsche Nationalbibliothek has archived the electronic publication "Reducing the educational hurdles facing young migrants", which is now permanently available on the archive server of Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.

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Last modified on: November 29, 2011