Print version Recommend this page Press release
27/ 2007
Bonn, 06.06.2007
Vocational education and training: aim of credit points system is to increase permeability
Although flexibility, mobility and ongoing continuing training have now become an integral part of the daily working requirements for many trainees and skilled workers, changing training courses, learning venues or employers, including cross-border moves, often render it difficult to obtain recognition of prior learning. All this is now set to change. The aim in future is to have a credit points system in place for vocational education and training, to operate in a similar way to the system used in institutes of higher education and providing better recording, transfer and crediting of competences. For this reason, the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) has been commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) to fund practically based pilot projects for a period of 30 months with a view to developing and testing such a credit points system. The deadline for tenders is 28 June 2007.
The aim of the BMBF initiative is to improve permeability, make competences comparable and transferable in the form of credit points, structure transitions in a better way and to provide improved links between the forms of learning in vocational education and training. The final objective is the creation of a credit points system which takes full account of the various occupational profiles whilst remaining easy to operate. The idea here is to increase the attractiveness of vocational training pathways and make it possible to avoid unproductive waiting loops, overlapping training and "educational dead-ends". Interested institutions, organisations or companies are invited to submit an application to BIBB to design and pilot relevant models.
The BMBF pilot initiative is targeted at the interfaces between vocational preparation and dual training, between full-time school-based and in-company training and between dual training and advanced training. It is oriented towards the specific characteristics of the German VET system (especially the Vocational Training Act, the dual system of vocational education and training and the occupation-based VET approach), towards already existing programmes and projects for the crediting and recording of competences in the German educational system and towards European initiatives such as the "Copenhagen Process" for the area of vocational education and training and the "Bologna Process" for the higher education sector.
Tender documentation (in German) may be downloaded at www.bmbf.de/de/7819.php
Point of contact at BIBB for further information:
- Dr. Egon Meerten, Tel.: 0228 / 107-1219, Fax: 0228 / 107-2995, E-Mail: meerten@bibb.de
